Australian Sen. Pauline Hanson suspended from Parliament for wearing burqa in protest

MEBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian senator who is campaigning for a national burqa ban was barred Tuesday from Parliament for the rest of the year for wearing the Muslim garment in the chamber.

Pauline Hanson, the 71-year-old leader of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigration One Nation minor party, was accused of performing a disrespectful stunt on Monday when she walked into the Senate shrouded in the head-to-ankle garment to protest fellow senators’ refusal to consider her bill that would ban the burqa and other full-face coverings in public places.

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.

The Senate arises for the year on Thursday and Hanson’s suspension will continue when Parliament resumes in February next year.

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.

Hanson, who gave a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida this month, created outrage in 2017 when she wore a burqa in the Senate in a similar protest. She wasn’t punished on that occasion.

The government leader in the Senate, Malaysian-born Penny Wong, who is not Muslim, moved the censure motion on Tuesday.

Wong said by wearing the burqa, Hanson had “mocked and vilified an entire faith” that was observed by almost 1 million Australians among a population of 28 million.

“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.

Pakistan-born Mehreen Faruqi said she and Afghanistan-born Fatima Payman were the only Muslims in the Senate. But when Hanson first wore the burqa in 2017, there were none.

“Let this be the start of actually dealing with structural and systemic racism that pervades this country,” Faruqi said of the censure motion.

Payman, who wears a hijab, did not speak in the Senate on Tuesday. But she told Hanson on Monday her use of the burqa was “disgraceful” and “a shame.”

A judge ruled last year that Hanson breached a racial anti-discrimination law by crudely telling Faruqi in a social media post to return to her homeland.

Hanson is appealing that ruling.

Rateb Jneid, president of the advocacy group Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said in a statement that Hanson wearing the burqa was “part of a pattern of behavior that has repeatedly vilified Muslims, migrants and minorities.”

Hanson has been known for her views on race since her first speech to Parliament in 1996, in which she said Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians” because of its non-discriminatory immigration policy.