Far-right senator suspended from Australian Senate for wearing burqa
Pauline Hanson stunned the Australian Senate by shoing up in a burqa, earning her a suspension from seven sitting days. This isn't far-right Hanson's first proverbial rodeo, she has campaigned for a burqa ban for years.
Melbourne/Sydney (AP/dpa) - Pauline Hanson, an Australian far-right politician, wore a burqa on the floor of the country's upper house on Monday in a political stunt that drew outrage from colleagues and led to the suspension of the Senate sitting.
Hanson, 71, leader of the anti-immigration One Nation party, entered the chamber wearing a black veil, drawing visible shock from some senators and anger from others.
Hanson has for years campaigned for a national ban of the burqa and other full-face coverings. It is the second time Hanson has appeared in the Senate wearing a burqa, after first doing so in 2017.
One of the harshest penalties
Senators suspended her for the rest of the day on Monday. In the absence of an apology, they passed a censure motion Tuesday that carried one of the harshest penalties against a senator in recent decades. She was barred from seven consecutive Senate sitting days.
Hanson later told reporters she would be judged by voters at the next election in 2028, not by her Senate colleagues. “They didn’t want to ban the burqa, yet they denied me the right to wear it on the floor of Parliament. There is no dress code on the floor of Parliament, yet I’m not allowed to wear it. So to me, it’s been hypocritical,” she said.
Outrage from colleagues
A Greens senator called the stunt "racist," while an independent colleague said Hanson was "disrespecting the faith" of Muslim Australians.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong moved to suspend Hanson for the remainder of the sitting day, telling the chamber: "Whatever our own beliefs may be, the sort of disrespect you are engaging in now is not worthy of a member of the Australian Senate and it should not be allowed to stand."
“Sen. Hanson’s hateful and shallow pageantry tears at our social fabric and I believe it makes Australia weaker, and it also has cruel consequences for many of our most vulnerable, including in our school yards,” Wong told the Senate.
According to the latest census data from 2021, about 3.2% of Australia's 25.4 million people are Muslim.