Abbott intervenes to lift 'burqa ban' at Parliament House

Australia's Parliament House lifted on Monday a short-lived ban on facial coverings, including burqas and niqabs after Prime Minister Tony Abbott 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 soundproof glass.

The Oct 2 announcement was made a few hours before the end of the final sitting day of Parliament's last two-week session and had no practical effect.

Hours before Parliament was to resume on Monday, the Department of Parliamentary Services 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 so that staff could "identify any person who may have been banned from entering Parliament House or who may be known or discovered to be a security risk".

A department official, who declined to be named, citing department policy, said that by late on Monday no visitor to Parliament House that day had a covered face. Face veils are rarely seen in the building.

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 Abbott later revealed he had not been notified in advance that the ban was planned and had asked House Speaker Bronwyn Bishop to "rethink that decision".

The restriction had been authorized by Bishop, who has campaigned for a ban on Muslim headscarves in government schools, as well as Senate President Stephen Parry.

The controversy came amid the government's attempts to assure Australia's Muslim minority that tough new counterterrorism laws were directed at countering criminal activity, not any particular religion.

The opposition welcomed the overturning of what it described as a "burqa ban" and demanded an explanation for its introduction.

"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 said in a statement.

(China Daily 10/21/2014 page11)