Pauline Hanson’s burka stunt yet another example of our most shameful weakness
This week the One Nation leader rehashed a stunt she first pulled eight years ago when she burst through the Senate doors dressed in a full burka, with a twist. By twist, I mean anyone watching copped an eyeful of leg as she strode into the chamber, face fully obscured, black robes flapping about behind her. No doubt it was meant to shock, and it did.
I had seen the coverage during the day but was too busy to stop and figure out what was going on and why. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I realised she had done this in response, perhaps retaliation, to the fact the parliament had rejected her request to table a bill to legislate a ban on religious coverings.
The lazy response belies the real issue
The responses to this stunt were instant and predictable. Hanson has been banned from the Senate for a week. Predictably, the vile Australian Greens along with ALP deserter senator Fatima Payman howled cries of racism. That’s the easy response, the lazy response, and it belies the real issue here, as does Hanson’s stunt itself. What Hanson did isn’t, in and of itself, racist. It was a stunt. It was silly and clumsy, and out of place and out of kilter. And, as with all things like that, it was a distraction from the issue she was attempting to prosecute.
Did it bring attention to the issue? Undoubtedly, but not necessarily for the better. A stunt is easy to dismiss. It’s easy to toss to one side and relegate to the rubbish heap of the unimportant.
I’m not convinced that, in isolation, the issue of religious facial coverings is a burning platform for Australian voters right now. As part of a wider conversation about Australian values, yes. But let’s just interrogate this for the sake of the broader point.
Wearing a burka into parliament does not invite a serious, sensitive conversation. I am a Christian and fully expect to be able to practise my faith freely and without interference. Except for when and if any part of the expression of that faith sets me on a collision course with accepted Australian values and norms.
Imagine if someone had gone into parliament drenched in fake blood with a cross tied to their back. That rightly would be dismissed as scandalous, nothing more than a stunt.
Already banned in 20 countries
If Hanson wanted to have a conversation about religious coverings such as burkas there are plenty of ways she might do that using fact and drawing on lessons from other countries in which such bans have been enacted.
She could have pointed out that the wearing of burkas and other religious face coverings in public was banned in more than 20 countries, including some majority-Muslim countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Denmark, Germany, Cameroon, Tunisia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, China, Bulgaria. It’s a surprisingly long list and the wider context around each nation makes for fascinating reading.
In 2017 the European Court of Human Rights upheld Belgium’s ban on burkas and full-face veils.
In Bulgaria, 10 per cent of the population is Muslim and the country banned all face-covering clothing, including burkas, a decade ago.
In Algeria, full-face veils and coverings were banned in 2018 and the government at the time said people should be identifiable when at work and in public.
Kazakhstan is a majority-Muslim country (70 per cent) and it banned the wearing of burkas in July this year.
If there is a conversation to be had, then it should be had based on the interrogation of facts. It should be a measured conversation of adults, not wrapped in stunts that cause most of us to turn off, dismissed as racism when it is no such thing.
A depressing truth
What this week showed is simple and a bit depressing. Yet another example of the Australian body politic’s biggest and most shameful weakness, from the government down, this inherent inability to have intelligent conversations about issues that matter.
Payman could have been part of this. Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, too.
Instead of screaming racism, which is the lazy, immature thing to do, why not lead a conversation based on experience as Muslim women living their faith in Australia’s federal parliament? Why not draw in other faiths, other parts of Australian society, to have a full, adult and meaningful conversation that doesn’t shy from the difficult threads?
Such as the truth that in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, a burka is a brutal form of oppression against women.
That in those countries it is a symbol of systemic erasure of women and their inherent human rights to have agency and choice.
Such as the truth that many would say that veils and facial coverings of any kind that apply only to women are not aligned with Australian values that speak to freedom, agency and choice, for women and for men.
There is also the contradiction that none of us can walk into a bank or a service station with a mask or a motorcycle helmet on, or anything else that might conceal our identities. This is a law that applies to everyone, equally. This is the Australian way.
All of these are valid areas for sensible, sensitive, intelligent discussion. All of them. Pulling a stunt like this week’s leaves no room for it.
Makes it easy to dismiss. It was a terrible own goal.
While this issue was the substantive one during the past seven days, there are plenty of others less sensitive and personal.
Nuclear energy, as a subtext of the broader energy debate, has been handled by the federal government in a manner that is somewhat Monty Python-esque but minus the cleverness and humour.
During the election campaign, and in fact any time in which nuclear is raised (as it should be) in the context of Australia’s growing, concerning, energy challenges, the response is the same.
Memes of three-eyed fish. References to Chernobyl. A wilful ignorance concerning where nuclear stands today in the global energy mix and a disregard for any conversation that may seek to understand how it can serve Australia’s interests.
It is embarrassing and it diminishes us as a nation. You can’t challenge the federal government on the debacle of energy policy without being shouted down as a climate denier. It’s the same stuff, the stuff of small minds and timid intellect.
I could go on. Immigration, housing, the economy; it is the government’s job to lead but it refuses to. Or perhaps can’t. If it won’t lead us out of this policy and intellectual wasteland, then we are in for more difficult days ahead. While the government may feel safe now, when the tipping point inevitably arrives there will be nobody else to blame.
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Senator Pauline Hanson isn’t shy about pulling a stunt to make a point. It almost has become part of her schtick. Take the cartoon series that unashamedly mocks the goings-on in federal parliament by way of sharp-tongued, animated satire that spares absolutely nobody. While sometimes crass, it’s always relatable and never misses the target. It’s not how politicians would traditionally communicate with voters, but that’s the point.