CANBERRA, Australia — Opposition leader Sussan Ley pounced on the political opportunity provided when One Nation founder Pauline Hanson entered the Senate covered in a burqa as it sat in uproar, hot debate to today’s end, and was told by her to leave Parliament for the remainder of the day. The vitriolic reaction to Pauline Hanson’s burqa stunt has given Ley an unexpected opportunity to distance the Coalition from far-right antics and refine her pitch to disillusioned moderate voters – Nov. 24, 2025.
How Pauline Hanson’s burqa stunt escalated into a political firestorm
The founding member of the far-right One Nation became the first federal figure to wear a burqa in the chamber in 2017; Monday’s reprise occurred just seconds after she failed to get leave from her colleagues to introduce a bill that would’ve banned burqas and other full-face coverings in public – an issue Hanson has campaigned on for years. Entering the chamber in her black item of clothing during a vote, Hanson refused to step out when at first she was told by Senate President Sue Lines that the eponymous outfit was a “prop” and ordered from the chamber as proceedings unraveled amid shouted claims of racism and Islamophobia.
Opposition Senate leader Penny Wong said the act was disrespectful to both the parliament and people who have a religious faith, forwarding Greens leader Larissa Waters described it as an “offense,” while Muslim senators Fatima Payman and Mehreen Faruqi added that their colleague Pauline Hanson’s burqa demonstration was racist and debased Muslim women who already receive abuse in public. Coalition Senate leader Anne Ruston also slammed Hanson, highlighting the uncommonly wide condemnation that united both sides of politics.
Hansen, however, presented it as a protest on behalf of “oppressive” clothing and national security threats before writing later that if her coworkers had issues with what she was wearing, they should just “ban the burqa” across the country. The WA senator lashed out at “PC lunatics” after Friday’s stunt, saying she rejected suggestions it was racist and labelled fellow senators hypocrites for not supporting her bill but finding the Pauline Hanson burqa protest inside the chamber offensive.
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The chaotic scenes followed Ley wrestling with poor polling and mutterings of a leadership challenge by conservative rival Andrew Hastie, after the Coalition’s primary vote remained mired in the mid-20s despite dramatically turning away from net-zero emissions targets. Ley had earlier in the day tried to reboot her eviscerated persona with a high-profile speech calling for Australians to “keep the rage” over the killing of 74 women by domestic violence this year, trying but failing to rebrand herself as a voice for safety and stability rather than culture-war histrionics.
This [Ley] versus the Pauline Hanson burqa sideshow in the Senate would provide an opportunity for the opposition leader to make an internal case for a cleaner break with One Nation and other hard-right forces. With Barnaby Joyce, the other former Nationals leader, openly warning that a frustrated conservative base is getting “shoppier” with their vote, Ley has been under pressure to hold the line amid calls for lower migration and louder culture-war messaging more in tune with Hanson.
Moderate Liberals have already warned that wading deep into culture-war battles can alienate the urban, suburban, and multicultural voters the party needs to win back — and the current Pauline Hanson burqa controversy will almost certainly be held up as a case in point. Far from rallying voters to the Coalition, such episodes threaten to reinforce a perception of Canberra as preoccupied with extreme symbolism at a time when most Australians are anxious about bills, housing, and the cost of essential services. The scenes on Monday give Ley a fresh opening to position herself as the adult in the room — if she can keep her own side united behind that message.
2017 – 2025, A long-standing Pauline Hanson burqa flashpoint
The controversy has also served to highlight just how much the politics of the Pauline Hanson burqa debate have not moved in eight years. Then AG George Brandis shut down Hanson’s first burqa statement in Question Time in 2017, and his stirring defence of Muslim Australians received a standing ovation and global attention from the likes of the Guardian at the time.
That initial Pauline Hanson burqa stunt sparked cross-party condemnation and warnings against using religious dress as a prop were “toxic”, including in reporting by the public broadcaster SBS in 2017. Human rights groups expressed similar concerns, with Amnesty International calling the act “a repugnant and intolerant act” that could give hope to abusers of Muslim women, according to a 2017 Amnesty statement.
The sequel on Monday was much the same: condemnation by parliament, outrage from Muslim communities, and renewed warnings from the government’s Islamophobia envoy that stunts like Pauline Hanson’s burqa wearing could make harassment and threats against Muslim women seem normal. The difference is that this round of Hanson shock tactics meets the brittle post-election environment in which Ley’s political life, or – at least for Morrison – the Coalition’s potential path back to power, may depend on how convincingly they can renounce that style of politics without running out of insulting ways to suck up to disaffected conservative voters.
