Bigger than the burqa

Why Pauline Hanson was censured and our bill - silenced.

They called it ‘a stunt’.

They being the hypocritical globalists in the Senate, the media mouthpieces waiting at the doors, and the predatory activists desperate for something to be outraged about.

The stunt being Senator Pauline Hanson’s decision to wear a burqa in the Chamber, which has brought the suffocation of our democracy to the public’s attention.

Since being delivered a majority - despite the lowest primary vote in history - Labor has made little effort to maintain Parliament’s veneer of debate.

Their deals with the Greens have allowed Bills to be rushed into law. Dissent is silenced by shuffling One Nation speakers to the bottom of the list and then cutting the speeches right before One Nation were about to speak - as happened to us on the controversial Environmental Protection and Reform Bill. Inquisitions are being staged where ‘concern for truth and safety’ are brandished as a way to enforce censorship.

Rapidly, Parliament has devolved into a protection racket for the worst policy imaginable.

When democracy is denied, ‘stunts’ become the best way to signal the alarm.

Big state politics thrives on bureaucracy. Its defenders pretend their air of ‘superiority’ and ‘maturity’ equals sensible policy when - really - they are performing the same role as a million pages of bureaucratic bullshit holding down the truth.

Boredom, bureaucracy, and silence. That is how democracy dies.

Politics was never meant to perform with the mannerisms of a hospital coffee shop or library foyer.

The Senate was not envisioned as a stuffy room.

When we consider political speeches that changed the world, they were not monologues in praise of moderation. They were brave. Indeed, the moment that won Donald Trump the election was when he rose from the stage, fist raised, shouting, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’

‘In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ - George Orwell

‘Truth’ is exactly what Pauline Hanson was seeking.

When a Muslim woman is forced - either by her family, society, or self-imposed culture - to cover herself in a piece of black a cloth banned in over 20 countries, she is invisible.

When a Western woman with red hair and a knee-length dress does the same, the oppression is instantly visible. It is uncomfortable. We see ourselves - the West - treading the edge of religious oppression.

Wearing the burqa in the Senate was an act of truth-telling.

‘Truth’ that lends weight to the lie that Islam is a purely neutral force in the West.

Like most religions, it has extreme edges. This intense variation of Islam is the largest perpetrator of global terror. It runs slave trades in its conquered provinces where Yazidi women are kept as prisoners. It subverts the political systems of its host country, running parallel Sharia court systems and strong - unwritten - cultural laws that run contrary to the accepted customs of the local population. It marries little girls to old men overseas (who they are often related to). It compels relatives to murder young women who fall in love with the wrong man under the false banner of ‘honour’. And it denies the hard-earned rights of women in the West to autonomy by enforcing a type of garment used to subjugate women.

This is what Australians thought about when black robes concealed one of the most recognisable faces in Australian politics.

The Senate refused the debate and threw Pauline Hanson out with screams of ‘racism’ because no one standing opposite could begin a debate - let alone win one.

Forgotten by the press is that this bill was also about security.

It was about banning a range of face coverings - not just the burqa. It included Antifa rioters concealing their identity, balaclavas which have become a symbol of fear on the streets of Melbourne, and those who hide their face while burning the Australian flag. If the debate had been allowed, the public would have seen that this bill was bigger than burqa.

When Pauline Hanson made a similar point in 2017, politicians controlled the press.

They were perfectly capable of fabricating outrage by reprinting copies of the same header over every broadsheet. There was a consensus within the Establishment. A pact to protect ‘multiculturalism’ over the far more sensible policy of assimilation.

Social media existed, however it was owned wall-to-wall by Democrat-leaning Silicon Valley entities and sometimes part-owned by Saudi figures.

Today, things are different. Elon Musk’s purchase of X might not be perfect, but its alignment with free speech principles has allowed the people of Australia to have a say on the burqa.

To the media’s shock, they agree with Pauline Hanson.

They probably agreed with her the first time too.

Not only did Australians agree, they were furious at the behaviour of the Senate for first stifling debate and then throwing Senator Hanson out.

Even conservative members of the Liberal and National parties - no doubt believing their own press from 2017 - were caught off guard when voters criticised them for censuring Senator Hanson.

A note to the Liberals: you cannot praise Scott Morrison for his coal stunt and then condemn Senator Hanson. Nor is it advisable to follow up the next day with a stunt of your own, waving bits of paper behind Sussan Ley to mock Labor for their power prices.

As usual, it is one rule for the Lib-Lab uniparty and another for One Nation.

It is evident that ‘stunts’ themselves are not a problem - it was the topic of the burqa they feared.

Voters are smart. They know something is wrong.

We fought too hard for our culture and our values to weather this moral descent without complaint.

Young people are coming to One Nation because they see this cultural shift in the streets they walk every day. The Canberra Bubble never truly sees what’s happening to Australia except through the sanitised fantasy of outraged activists.

One Nation will not abandon the women of Australia, the people who fled here for safety, or those whose families built this nation from the ground up.

And we will not sit politely while the safety of Australians is put at risk.

Even if the Senate throws us out a thousand times, we will remain, because you elected us to serve you, not those in the Chamber.

Senator Malcolm Roberts