The acting chair, Slade Brockman, found initially that Hanson’s dress was allowed, and proceedings were not stopped, but Senate President Sue Lines rushed back to the chamber after news of the stunt broke, to hear Wong and Ruston condemn the actions and ask that Hanson be removed.
Senator Pauline Hanson moves to the other side of the Senate chamber during a vote. Members of the Greens and crossbench were furious with the stunt.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Wong had asked Lines to rule that Hanson’s conduct was disorderly, quoting former Liberal senator George Brandis, who rebuked the One Nation leader the last time she wore the garment on the Senate floor.
“All of us in this place. Have a great privilege and we represent in our states people of every faith … and we should do so decently,” Wong said. “The sort of disrespect that you are engaging in now is not worthy of a member of the Australian Senate.”
Hanson in front of Senator Fatima Payman.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Hanson was ordered to remove the item and leave the chamber or face suspension, and the Senate voted overwhelmingly to have her removed.
Hanson was heard saying to Lines: “You are so vile, you are not doing your job properly.”
Pauline Hanson sits with her One Nation colleagues during a vote in the Senate.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
A number of people in the public gallery applauded as Hanson left, and proceedings were suspended.
Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce, who is openly considering defecting to One Nation, defended Hanson’s choice, saying: “People are free to express themselves politically and you are free to interpret it any way you wish.”
Nationals senator Matt Canavan, one of the Coalition’s most conservative MPs, slammed Hanson and argued it was a desperate, attention-seeking stunt.
Canavan said respectful points could be made about migration, but Hanson was acting improperly. “Don’t vote for them … They only live if you give them attention and look at them,” Canavan said on ABC TV.
“I don’t like this type of politics. This is disrespectful to Muslim Australians. I don’t support ridiculing people.”
Hanson first wore a burqa into the Senate chamber in 2017. Her renewed attempt to ban the burqa was slammed earlier on Monday by Australia’s Islamophobia envoy Aftab Malik, who said the move will worsen harassment, threats of rape, and violence against Muslim women in Australia.
“It is frustrating to see Australian Muslim women’s choice of clothing continually tied to national security concerns. Islamophobia is at record levels in Australia, described as ‘unprecedented’ by the Islamophobia Register Australia. Muslim women, in particular, face the brunt,” Malik wrote in a statement provided to this masthead.
One Nation senator Pauline Hanson and Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia Aftab Malik.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, AAP
“Senator Pauline Hanson, eight years after her last call to ban the burqa, is again proposing it. This will deepen existing safety risks for Australian Muslim women who choose to wear the headscarf, the hijab, or the full face and body covering, the burqa.”
Hanson’s office did not release a copy of the motion before she attempted to table it in the upper house on Monday afternoon, but an October media statement from her office said the move was set to echo similar bans in France. Hanson was not given leave by the government to introduce the bill.
“This is all about helping to better ensure the safety of the Australian community. This should be the first responsibility of any government, and any government which doesn’t prioritise these measures doesn’t deserve the title,” Hanson said.
Hanson has campaigned against burqas since at least 2002, and in 2014 said she was “offended by the burqa, and opposed to even the niqab”, claiming that “people wearing full face coverings, including women, are known to have hidden bombs underneath them, which they’ve detonated in acts of terror, in various places around the world, such as Chechnya.”
Hanson made headlines in 2017 when she first wore a burqa into the Senate, demanding the Coalition government ban the garment.
“In light of our national security of this nation, will [the government] work with me to actually ban the burqa in Australia, considering there have been 13 foiled national threats against us with terrorism, three that have been successful that Australians have lost their lives?” she asked.
Hanson was rebuked by both the then-Coalition government and Labor for the stunt.
Malik pointed to past estimates that showed fewer than 250 women in Australia wore the burqa, and that the action would directly threaten their safety.
“They already face harassment, threats of rape, and violence, not because of what they have done, but because of what they wear. Veiled Muslim women have long been easy targets for bigotry and intolerance against Muslims. A proposed burqa ban will further stigmatise them as outsiders and embolden harassment and abuse,” Malik said.
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“All women should be free to choose what they wear or do not wear,” he said.
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, who is herself Muslim and mired in a racial vilification case against Hanson, told this masthead One Nation “has nothing to offer Australians apart from tired culture wars and hollow publicity stunts”.
One Nation’s polling reached a record high, receiving a primary vote of 12 per cent in the latest Resolve Political Monitor from this masthead and record popularity in News Corp’s Newspoll and the AFR Redbridge/Accent polls as well. Hanson is actively aiming to recruit Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, who told this masthead One Nation had “a purer form of understandable conservatism”.
Joyce continued to keep his distance from the Nationals’ party room as MPs returned to parliament on Monday, restating that he would wait until parliament rises to make any decision known about a potential move to One Nation.
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