Andrew Bolt: Worrying response to Pauline Hanson’s burqa stunt

PAULINE Hanson is guilty of pulling a stunt by wearing a face-covering burqa into Parliament, but the reaction to it from our political elite is what scares me more, writes Andrew Bolt.

• Pauline Hanson wears a burqa in the Senate
• James Campbell: Fancy dress shows pointless politics of fear
• Susie O’Brien: How Pauline’s own stunt proved her wrong
• Brandis attacks Hanson’s move to wear burqa in Senate
• Malcolm Roberts’ passionate but confusing defence of Pauline Hanson

YES, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is guilty of pulling a stunt by wearing a face-covering burqa into Parliament.

But the reaction to it from our political elite — huffsters like Attorney-General George Brandis — is what scares me more.

Labor and Greens senators shouted “shame” and “you’re a disgrace” as Hanson hovered in and asked Brandis if the Government would ban the burqa, at least in Parliament.

As Hanson later noted, not a single security guard had asked to see her face.

And as she also noted, the burqa has been banned from public areas not just in European countries like France, Belgium and Italy, but also in Muslim ones like Malaysia.

She has a point here, and that’s even without considering the burqa is also a shameful symbol of the subjugation of women, blotting them out of the public space.

You’d actually expect Labor and the Greens — normally fast to denounce sexism — to denounce the burqa, too.

Pauline Hanson removes her burqa during Senate Question Time. Picture: AAP

Instead we got the same overheated damnation of Hanson that will convince many Australians she is in fact one of the few politicians with the guts to call things by their proper name.

But George Brandis is not.

Brandis should note well that by the end of his speech attacking Hanson’s stunt he got a standing ovation from the Greens and Labor, but none from his own side.

In fact, barely half the Liberal and Nationals Senators even clapped, and here’s why.

First, Brandis — and Senators of the Left — savaged Hanson for wearing a burqa, but many voters would know these same MPs would have applauded the “courage” of a Muslim MP wearing that alienating sack.

Second, Brandis dangerously elevated the burqa as an important symbol of Islam — a “religious garment”.

Labor’s Penny Wong was as bad, praising the wearing of the burqa as a “sincere act of faith”.

That’s troubling.

Apologists used to claim the burqa was just a backward tribal thing that did not represent nice and sweet Islam at all. But now it apparently does.

Attorney-General George Brandis responds to Pauline Hanson. Picture: AAP

Senators applaud George Brandis for his criticism of Pauline Hanson. Picture: AAP

Third, Brandis, voice cracking with emotion, then got to the heart of his problem with Hanson’s burqa, and this is not just troubling but alarming.

“It has been the advice of each Director-General of security … and each Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police with whom I have worked that it is vital for their intelligence and law enforcement work that they work cooperatively with the Muslim community,” he blustered.

“To ridicule that community, to drive it into a corner, to mock its religious garments is an appalling thing to do.”

Let me translate: do not mock or criticise the burqa or more Muslims will attack us.

Sorry, but I don’t want us cowed by such threats. The burqa is an abomination, and no threats should stop me from asserting this feminist truth.

Does anyone tell gay activists to stop dressing up as nuns or Christians may blow us up?

What Brandis has in fact said is that Muslims are dangerous, and the burqa represents them.

I hope Brandis is just exaggerating the extremism of most Muslims.

But I certainly know he’s kowtowing to a radical minority who want their women bagged and hidden from view.

That is unacceptable.

What Hanson says is not so important. But what is said by Hanson’s powerful critics — that’s what really has me worried.

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Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Worrying response to Pauline Hanson’s burqa stunt