Australian Senator Pauline Hanson was suspended from Parliament on Monday after entering the Senate chamber wearing a burqa in protest. The 71-year-old leader of the One Nation party wore the full-body covering to object to colleagues refusing to debate her bill seeking a ban on burqas and other full-face coverings in public, the Associated Press reported.
Senators suspended her for the remainder of Monday’s sitting. When she declined to apologize, the chamber passed a censure motion on Tuesday, resulting in her being barred for seven additional sitting days — one of the most severe penalties issued in recent decades.
Hanson criticized the decision, arguing that parliament had acted inconsistently. «They didn’t want to ban the burqa, yet they denied me the right to wear it on the floor of parliament,» she said.
Hanson previously wore a burqa in the Senate in 2017 as part of a similar protest, which did not result in disciplinary action at the time.
The censure motion was introduced by Senate leader Penny Wong, who said Hanson’s actions «mocked and vilified an entire faith» practiced by almost one million Australians.
Hanson has faced past criticism for inflammatory remarks. Last year, she was found to have breached racial anti-discrimination laws after telling Pakistan-born Senator Mehreen Faruqi to «go back» to her country in a social media post.
Meanwhile, this summer, Kazakhstan banned wearing burqas that obscure a person’s face in public. Similar bans were introduced by Uzbekistan in 2023 and by Kyrgyzstan in January 2025.
