An Australian senator who campaigned for a national burqa ban was suspended from Parliament on Tuesday after wearing a burqa in the Senate chamber.
Pauline Hanson, leader of the anti-immigration One Nation party, was barred for seven consecutive Senate sitting days. The suspension will continue when Parliament resumes in February.
The 71-year-old politician donned the head-to-ankle garment Monday to protest senators’ refusal to consider her bill banning burqas and other full-face coverings in public spaces. Fellow lawmakers called the move a disrespectful stunt that mocked Australia’s Muslim community.
The censure represents one of the harshest penalties against a senator in recent decades.
“They didn’t want to ban the burqa, yet they denied me the right to wear it on the floor of Parliament,” Hanson told reporters. “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.”
Government Senate leader Penny Wong, who moved the censure motion, said Hanson had “mocked and vilified an entire faith” observed by nearly one million Australians. “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 said.
This wasn’t Hanson’s first burqa protest. She wore the garment in the Senate in 2017 but faced no punishment then.
Pakistan-born Senator Mehreen Faruqi noted she and Afghanistan-born Fatima Payman are the Senate’s only Muslim members. “Let this be the start of actually dealing with structural and systemic racism that pervades this country,” Faruqi said.
A judge ruled last year that Hanson breached racial anti-discrimination laws in a social media post telling Faruqi to return to Pakistan. Hanson is appealing that ruling.
The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils called the burqa incident “part of a pattern of behavior that has repeatedly vilified Muslims, migrants and minorities.” Hanson has courted controversy since her 1996 maiden parliamentary speech, warning Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians.”
The senator, who spoke at Florida’s Conservative Political Action Conference this month, said voters would judge her actions at the 2028 election. Her suspension marks an escalation in Parliament’s response to inflammatory stunts targeting religious minorities.