Pauline Hanson has been censured by the Senate and suspended from the chamber for seven days after her burqa stunt and will be barred from representing the parliament in overseas delegations.
In an overwhelming show of opposition to the repeat of her 2017 stunt, members of Labor, the Coalition, the Greens and crossbench voted for the censure motion. Only Hanson, her three fellow One Nation senators, and United Australia senator Ralph Babet opposed it.
The Senate voted 55 to five to censure Hanson for her burqa stunt. The motion, as agreed by the Senate, stated that Hanson’s actions were “intended to vilify and mock people on the basis of their religion” and were “disrespectful to Muslim Australians”.
The motion went on to condemn Hanson for disrespecting the Senate by ignoring and refusing rulings to remove the burqa, forcing the temporary shutdown of the Senate on Monday afternoon and seeing the suspension of Hanson from parliament for the remainder of the day.
Government sources on Monday had said the temporary suspension of Hanson was a stronger step than a censure motion. But the motion passed by the Senate on Tuesday – which goes on to criticise Hanson’s “blatant disregard for the authority of the Senate President” – stated that the chamber “does not regard it as appropriate for Senator Hanson to represent the Senate as a member of any delegation during the life of this Parliament”. The censure motion also called on Hanson “immediately to make an explanation or apology” for her actions.
That mirrored a censure motion and punishment levelled against the Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi in July after she held up a sign reading “sanction Israel” during the governor general Sam Mostyn’s speech to open parliament.
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Hanson refused to apologise, however, instead using a five-minute address to defend her actions. Immediately after that, the government leader, Penny Wong, moved that Hanson be suspended from the chamber for seven days – which Hanson agreed to.
Speaking in the Senate before the vote to censure Hanson, Faruqi said: “This parliament drips now in racism.”
“Finally, after three decades … of piling on hate and racism, on Muslims, on Asians, on people of colour, finally, at least some of us in this chamber want to hold Senator Hanson to account,” she said.
“You just want to talk about respecting each other. Well, this is where respecting each other and just talking the talk has got us, this parliament drips now in racism, because for decades – for decades – politicians and both major parties, can I say, let it happen.”
Wong, who moved Tuesday’s motion as the first piece of business in the Senate, claimed Hanson “has been parading prejudice as protest for decades”.
“After what occurred yesterday, someone I’m close to this morning spoke about a conversation with her seven-year-old daughter last night and her daughter asked, ‘Mummy, do all Christians hate Muslims?’ That summarised where we find ourselves and we see it again,” she said.
At this point of Wong’s speech, Babet was heard by this masthead, and by numerous people in the Senate chamber, to have called out “I do”.
The words “I do” can be made out faintly on video recordings of the Senate debate, and were heard by several Senate sources from various political parties. Babet told Guardian Australia he had said: “I do, I hate radical Islam.”
Approached for comment, Babet added: “Radical Islam has no place in Australia, it is the sword that the radical Marxists will use to dismantle western civilisation.”
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