Des Houghton: Pauline Hanson’s burka move raises uncomfortable truths
Pauline Hanson has sparked fresh controversy after wearing a burka to protest migration assimilation policies, writes Des Houghton.
The gloriously mischievous Pauline Hanson raised an uncomfortable truth about assimilation this week when she wore a burka into the Senate chamber.
Are we choosing migrants who will willingly integrate and assimilate? Will they honour their oath of allegiance to obey and uphold Australian laws?
Will they be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King George the Sixth and his heirs and successors?
Will they adopt the democratic beliefs we share?
Will they affirm each citizen’s Constitutional right of religious freedom, and in doing so not seek to put one religion above another?
I suspect the problem of assimilation was at the heart of Hanson’s burka protest.
As usual, however, the pros and cons of migration were lost in the media circus that followed
with one moralizing moron after another condemning her as a racist.
In the insufferably woke battleground of ideas we now find ourselves in, joining words like immigration and assimilation in the same sentence is like juggling hand grenades.
You will be accused of prejudice.
Hanson had proposed a private member’s bill to ban the burka, but it was rebuffed at the outset, and she was not given a chance to put her case.
It says a lot about our attitude to free speech when an elected member is censored inside Parliament.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is moving to ban the burka and niqab in public places. Her ruling Brothers of Italy party is presenting a Bill imposing fines of up to $5200 for wearing the face-covering garments in schools, universities, shops and offices.
Gift of humble pie
Pauline Hanson is fearful she may lose her mind while still in Parliament.
“If I get like Joe Biden, tap me on the shoulder and tell me to move on,” she told me last Saturday night at the Conserative Political Action Conference Christmas party where she had come, like me, to hear Barnaby Joyce speaking.
Barnaby was a great friend, she said, and she would lure him to One Nation not just with prime Gina Rinehart beef but with mulberry pie.
She had a decent crop of mulberries on the tree on her Scenic Rim farm this year and she would make Barnaby a pie with a crust made from plain flour, self-raising flour and powdered milk to a recipe her mother taught her.
Barnaby got a rousing reception and said other National Party MPs would likely follow him to Hanson’s One Nation if he decided to defect.
“If they want to come across, they will have to leave their egos at the door,” Hanson quipped.
IRRITANT
The thieves who stole Santa’s letterbox from outside the Customs House in Rockhampton.
Bring it back you miserable louts.
Originally published as Des Houghton: Pauline Hanson’s burka move raises uncomfortable truths
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