Australia’s Parliament House lifts face veil ban after PM intervenes

Australia’s Parliament House on Monday lifted a short-lived ban on facial coverings including burqas and niqabs after the prime minister intervened. The government department that runs Parliament House announced earlier this month that “persons with facial coverings” would no longer be allowed in the open public galleries of the House of Representatives or the Senate. Instead, they were to be directed to galleries usually reserved for noisy schoolchildren, where they could sit behind sound-proof glass. But hours before Parliament was to resume on Monday, the Department of Parliamentary Services, or DPS, said in a statement that people wearing face coverings would again be allowed in all public areas of Parliament House. It said face coverings would have to be removed temporarily at the security check point at the front door.

The decision today to allow burqas and other forms of identity-concealing items of dress to be worn in Australia’s Parliament will put a smile on the face of the overseas Islamic extremists and their supporters in Australia who view the burqa or niqab as flags for extremism.

Senator Jacqui Lambie, from the minor Palmer United Party

The ban on face veils in the public galleries had been widely condemned as a segregation of Muslim women and a potential breach of federal anti-discrimination laws. Prime Minister Tony Abbott later revealed that he had not been notified in advance that the ban was planned and had asked House Speaker Bronwyn Bishop to “rethink that decision.” Senate President Stephen Parry added that the policy on face coverings was not made on the advice of police or the national domestic security agency. The controversy came as the government attempts to assure Australia’s Muslim minority that tough new counterterrorism laws and police raids on terror suspects’ homes in recent months were directed at countering criminal activity, not any particular religion.

In 2014 for two weeks, the official policy of the Australian Parliament was to practice segregation and we need to ensure this does not happen again.

Senior opposition lawmaker Tony Burke