What an image. No wonder it went viral. A woman in a burka strides across a parliamentary chamber, face and body entirely concealed, but legs – and high heels – very much on display.
The faces you can see, those of her political colleagues, say it all: What on earth? The proud and unrepentant owner of the legs, and the burka (bought online, she tells me. ‘Can you imagine if I’d gone into a shop?’) is Senator Pauline Hanson, founder and leader of the Right-wing populist One Nation party in Australia.
Think of her as Nigel Farage – but in a frock and with the flamboyance and footwork that comes with having made the final of the Australian version of Strictly Come Dancing.
This week, the 71-year-old grandmother-of- five caused uproar when, objecting to not being allowed to introduce a Bill to ban public wearing of full-face coverings such as the burka and niqab, she marched out of the Senate – only to return clad in her very own black burka, arguing that, since there was no dress code in parliament, she had every right to wear it.
The spectacle caused uproar. The Senate was suspended for an hour and a half.
Condemnation came fast, with colleagues – across party lines – calling the ‘stunt’ racist, disrespectful, a mockery of faith. Senator Hanson was accused of vilifying Islam and stoking prejudice. She was suspended from the Senate for seven days, the motion to punish her carried by 55-5, one of the strongest rebukes in decades.
It was not the first time she has faced serious accusations of racism. In 2022, after she told fellow senator Mehreen Faruqi on social media to ‘pack your bags and p*** off back to Pakistan’, she was censured by the Senate. In 2024 a court held Hanson legally liable for racial discrimination, a judge ruling that her comment breached the Racial Discrimination Act because it was likely to ‘offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate’ on the basis of race or national origin.
Does she care about the furore she has caused this week? Absolutely not. ‘Have you seen my Facebook page?’ she asks, defiant during our Zoom interview.
Senator Pauline Hanson is founder and leader of the Right-wing populist One Nation party in Australia
She caused uproar when she marched into the Senate in a black burka and high heels in protest over not being allowed to introduce a bill banning them
‘I don’t know if you’re aware but I’ve got the biggest social media following of any politician [in Australia]. I’ve got 200k more followers than the prime minister.
‘I’ve had people joining my party because of this. Ordinary people are behind me. I’ve had people coming up giving me hugs. People who disagreed with me 20 years ago have been coming up saying, “You were right. The things you warned us about have happened.” ’
The woman who likes to cause outrage – ‘I’m the woman who will say the unsayable,’ she declares – is outraged that her protest is being called a stunt.
‘It was not a stunt. A stunt is designed to show off. This was to highlight the hypocrisy. This was me saying, “You don’t want to discuss banning the burka, but then you are screaming at me to take it off? You can’t have it both ways.” ’
It’s certainly a provocative way to spark debate about an issue that is already a global concern.
Across the world, some 23 countries have banned the burka to some degree. In 2010, France passed a law banning the full-face veil in public places, but there are also restrictions in place in Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Even several Muslim-majority countries have restrictions, mostly driven by security or administrative concerns.
Why can’t it even be debated in Australia? ‘It’s political correctness and wokeness that mean you can’t call things out for what they are,’ she says. Her argument is simple. The wearing of the burka is ‘not a religious requirement’ and is ultimately divisive. It causes security and administrative headaches. ‘Why should you have to take a helmet off to go into a bank and yet . . ?’.
Hanson was suspended from the Senate for seven days for her burka-wearing stunt in the Senate
But her key point today is that it is fundamentally anti-women.
‘I’ve also done it to prove a point that women are being oppressed by the men who are forcing them to wear it. Women’s rights are being stripped away from them. Everyone here – the Greens, Labour – are screaming for women’s rights, domestic violence, same pay, superannuation, all these issues, and yet they won’t stand up for women who are forced to wear a burka by men.’
How did a female politician whose career has been built on an anti-immigration message even come to have a burka handy? Hanson explains that she had a member of staff order hers online eight years ago just before she carried out a similar parliamentary protest. That one was planned. ‘I wore black pants under it.’
It caused similar outrage but, afterwards, the burka was bundled away in a wardrobe in her office.
When she was thwarted over her proposed Bill this week, she saw red – and black. ‘I have these moments, an epiphany, and it just came to me: “I’ll put it on.” Because it wasn’t planned, I just had my everyday clothes underneath.’
Frankly, she looked almost comical stumbling her way through the chamber, but what did it feel like, under there? ‘It’s horrible. It really is terrible. I was struggling to see where I was going. It’s like this facade you are behind, completely hidden. No one can see your facial expressions.’
Nor could she see the horror on her colleagues’ faces but she doesn’t care about that because there is no love lost there.
‘Everyone is supposed to be treated the same in Australia, regardless of race. It’s pretty unheard of to stop a senator from moving their private member’s Bill, but they stopped me because they don’t like me. They don’t like my politics. I don’t particularly like them either. But shutting me down isn’t democratic. It’s not giving the people a voice.’
Senator Hanson pictured outside Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday
She was not always a fearless battleaxe of a woman, she says. She has been married twice, has two children from each marriage, and claims today that she experienced domestic violence in her second marriage. ‘I was not the person I am today,’ she points out.
Today, she takes no prisoners. Her political stance brought her death threats in the early days. Her daughter Lee also had a death threat when she was 13, and it was taken seriously enough for Lee to have to move from the family home into hiding for a while.
She founded Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party in 1997. It was very much a one-woman show. She set out her wares: anti-immigration, scepticism of multiculturalism, standing-up for what she calls ‘ordinary Australians’ and a traditional Australia rooted in Anglo-Celtic history.
She has British roots herself. Her paternal grandparents emigrated from London and Wiltshire; her maternal grandparents were born in Ireland.
One Nation used to be a minnow of a party, and still is to a degree, but its influence is growing. In the 2025 election, it doubled its representation in the Senate and now holds four seats, putting it on a par with some of the traditional smaller parties. The polls have recorded a surge recently, attributed to voter disillusionment over issues such as immigration and net zero. So parallels with the Reform Party here. And yes, Hanson knows Nigel Farage.
‘I’ve met Nigel when he came here, and we had dinner at a function recently in the States.’
Are you happy with the comparison? ‘Why wouldn’t I be? I’m not embarrassed by that. They also call me the Trump of Australia. We are on the same lines, same page.’
And yet she stands by the sentiment and by the idea that the immigration issue is ‘worse’ in the UK. ‘You are in a bad space in the UK, you really are,’ she says. ‘We’re only about five years behind you. What’s happening with your flags, with your refugees being put into hotels paid for by the Government? The same thing is happening here and Australians are fed up with it – this losing your country.’
Hanson was suspended while campaigning for the passage of a bill banning the Islamic garment
We get into quite the conversation about feminism. Some online trolls said she looked better with a burka on. Was she bothered? ‘No. I don’t care what the ratbags say.’ Does she always wear heels? Is it a power thing? ‘No, I like to look smart and why would I finish that with flatties? I like to dress up.’ She rolls her eyes when I say that some say heels are a symbol of the patriarchy, a man’s idea of what a woman should wear.
‘I don’t please anyone but myself,’ she says. But can’t you understand that some women say the same thing about wearing a burka? Their body; their choice?
‘Fine. Go and find yourselves a country where you will fit in very nicely with the laws and everything that is happening in that country. Australia is a country that is about assimilation,’ she says, not for turning.
One of her political heroines is Margaret Thatcher, who didn’t much care what people thought about her either. ‘I have a lot of respect for her, and for a lot of the things she tried to do. And she was a strong woman. People want leaders with conviction.’ Her critics say that Hanson is an irrelevance, even in Australia, but her latest ‘stunt’ has made her – and her message – hard to ignore.
She reminds me that the message is not new. ‘I’ve been saying the same thing for 20 years.
‘What’s heartening is that people who used to oppose me are coming up to me now and saying “You were right”.’
