Australian senator suspended for burqa-wearing stunt in Parliament

Sydney: Australia’s senate on Tuesday suspended a right-wing lawmaker for wearing a burqa in Parliament, a political stunt she staged for a second time to push for a national law banning the garment from public spaces.

Pauline Hanson, the leader of the anti-immigration One Nation party, was suspended for seven sitting days of the legislative body after she appeared in the chamber Monday in the full-body and full-face covering, repeating a gambit she waged in 2017 to widespread criticism and outrage. The senator, who represents the state of Queensland, is not Muslim.

Hanson’s appearance Monday afternoon was met with angry responses from other lawmakers, with audible cries of “shame on you.” Another senator said her attire was a “middle finger to people of faith.”

The senate was suspended after Hanson appeared to refuse to leave the room or take off the burqa. The bill to ban the garment in public was not voted on.

In proposing Hanson’s suspension on Tuesday, Sen. Penny Wong, who is also the country’s foreign minister, called the move an “immature and shameless stunt” that was clearly aimed only at getting attention.

“Sen. Hanson has mocked and vilified an entire faith, a faith observed by nearly a million Australians,” Wong said.

Another senator, Mehreen Faruqi, noted that there were no Muslims in the legislative body at the time of Hanson’s 2017 stunt, but that now there are two Muslim women in the chamber representing Australians. She was referring to herself and Sen. Fatima Payman, the first lawmaker to wear a hijab in Parliament.

She said lawmakers from both major parties had allowed the racism to stand in Parliament.

“You all let it happen,” Faruqi, who was born in Pakistan and is the deputy leader of the Greens party, said in Parliament on Tuesday. At least one lawmaker rejected that characterization, but Hanson was not punished in 2017.

On Tuesday, there was widespread condemnation of Hanson in the Senate, which voted 55-5 to censure her before she was suspended overwhelmingly in a voice vote.

Hanson accused her fellow lawmakers of hypocrisy for disallowing her to wear the burqa while refusing to vote on the ban, saying she will be judged by her constituents the next time she runs for reelection.

Hanson, 71, has been staunchly anti-immigration throughout her decades in politics, warning in the mid-1990s that Australia was going to be overrun by Asian immigrants and that they were to blame for the country’s social problems. She turned the focus of her attacks to Muslim immigrants about a decade ago.

In September, she joined the crowds in Canberra at an anti-immigration rally called “March for Australia,” in which some neo-Nazi groups participated, raising alarm. Earlier this month, she traveled to the United States to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

A poll published this month showed record levels of support for Hanson’s party, at 15%, amid tumult in the country’s main conservative opposition, a coalition between the Liberal and National parties. One Nation holds four seats in the 76-member senate.