Bronwyn Bishop, Speaker of the Houses of Parliament, Image - AAP/Stefan Postles

Bronwyn Bishop, Speaker of the Houses of Parliament – Image, AAP/Stefan Postles

The headline read “Tony Abbott, Bronwyn Bishop stand-off on Burqa ban”. The story told us that there was a stand-off of sorts between the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Houses of Parliament. And we know that the stand-off related to the decision of the speaker to ask for new rules that segregated anyone wearing a face veil to be sectioned into a glassed off area to view the events in Parliament.

This is an issue that has consumed many centimetres of space in our national newspapers and inundated the talk back programs on many radio stations. It consumed space on our nightly television news bulletins and I am sure also used valuable space normally devoted to the latest fad diets or marriage scams on our nightly “current affair” programs. (Through the plethora of news time devoted to this, one commentator in WA, Paul Murray, demonstrated a level of commitment to “proper news” by refusing to devote any time to the discussion, as he saw it for what it was – a distraction from the affairs of state that should be our prime and only concern).

I participated in one talkback discussion on the issue and simply pointed out the following. To all of those people that insist that this is a security issue, understand this: when someone enters Parliament House they are subjected to the usual identity checks. Every person who enters is required to be identified and where a person is in a Burqa they are taken into a private room and a female security officer will identify them and check their credentials. After that they are allowed to enter the debating halls etc and view Parliament from where everyone else views Parliament. What the Speaker had proposed was for these people to be now segregated into the glassed off area of viewing where currently only children are housed. Therefore, if it is a security issue why is the Speaker proposing that these supposedly “unsecure” people be confined to an area where there are children?

Rightly, the Prime Minister indicated that he was not happy with the decision. He has asked that the Speaker reconsider her decision. But why are we surprised at Ms Bishop (the Speaker, Bronwyn Bishop) making the decision that she has. As far back as 2005 I recall being asked to comment on some matters raised by Ms Bishop. At the time she was the Shadow Minister for Education and at the time she was quoted as saying the following. Remember that these comments are in regard to the Hijab which is merely the headscarf and does not even address the issue of a face covering:

“Liberal backbencher Bronwyn Bishop has backed a push to ban Muslim girls from wearing headscarves at public schools, describing their use as an iconic act of defiance.

Ms Bishop backed the view of outspoken Liberal MP Sophie Panopoulos, who last week said she was concerned about Muslim women not showing their faces when they posed for photographic identification.

Ms Bishop today said the issue had been forced upon Australia, which was experiencing a clash of cultures.

“In an ideal society you don’t ban anything,” she told the Seven Network.

“But this has really been forced on us because what we’re really seeing in our country is a clash of cultures and indeed, the headscarf is being used as a sort of iconic item of defiance,” she told Channel Seven.

“I’m talking about in state schools. If people are in Islamic schools and that’s their uniform, that’s fine. In private life, that’s fine.”

She was further quoted as follows: “New South Wales Liberal MP, Bronwyn Bishop, sparked the debate by calling for a ban and saying that the argument that wearing the Hijab gives a sense of freedom is the same sort of argument that Nazis used”.

So nothing that Ms Bishop does today to further her previously stated beliefs about the Muslim women’s dress should surprise us. Prime Minister Abbott has taken the right approach and argued that the criminalisation of a piece of clothing in this fashion is inappropriate.

As a related matter, I have written often about the disenfranchisement and dissatisfaction that can be felt by people in a society. That disenfranchisement can result in the radicalisation of members of that community. There is almost a certainty about the fact that people who aren’t allowed to wear an item of clothing that they regard as significant to them will feel disenfranchised. And that could result in further radicalisation as people are alienated in society.

Before indicating that the Burqa etc is a symbol of subjugation or in the words of that intellectual bankrupt Senator Cory Bernardi a “Shroud of Oppression” let me say that I have spoken to a number of Muslim women who wear the Burqa/Niqab voluntarily and feel enlivened by it. A number of those women have been featured in the pages of our local newspaper (Tasneem and Masturah are but two of them in recent times). So the only way we will determine if it is a voluntary decision of the woman is to ask each and every one of them!

It was in 2009 that President Obama was quoted as having said the following: “In his Cairo speech to the Muslim world earlier this month, Mr. Obama called on Western countries “to avoid dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear,” saying such action constituted “hostility” towards religion clothed in “the pretence of liberalism.” Five years on it appears we have not learnt much more about this.

Finally I looked around to ascertain roughly how many women were likely to be wearing the Burqa in Australia. As a comparison the numbers in France are as follows: French Police estimate that there are 2000 women who wear the full face covering Burqa. That’s the total out of a French Muslim population of 5 million people. Using the same percentages here would suggest that there would be 0.04% of 476,000 Australian Muslim people likely to be wearing a Burqa here, a total of 190 people. As Paul Murray indicated, this is a distraction that is hardly worthy of the attention of a Prime Minister and the Speaker of the House.