Guardian: Burqa and niqab-wearing women will now be confined in a segregated enclosure, should they wish to view parliamentary proceedings in Canberra. Normally an innocuous viewing area for school children, the glass box now seems more like the holding area for war criminals at the Hague.
The speaker Bronwyn Bishop and the Senate president Stephen Parry are still weighing the case to go one more step, and ban face coverings from parliament house altogether.
Security is the official explanation, which is difficult to fathom. Everyone who attends the visitors’ gallery has to pass through a screening process, face coverings or not. Bombs, knives or guns hidden in burqas are as likely to be picked up as if they were embedded in Bombay Bloomers.
Like many of the spurious arguments propounded in this alarmist environment, the latest restriction has more to do with Islamophobia than security. Tony Abbott, the prime minister, says he finds the burqa “confronting”, but has never seen a burqa in parliament house.
The dog whistle from the Australian government has now become a clarion call. Might we feel safer if Muslims were imprisoned at Cowra, like the Japanese in 1944?