Australia’s Parliament House on Monday lifted a short-lived ban on facial coverings, including burqas and niqabs after intervention from Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
The government department that runs Parliament House announced on October 2 that “persons with facial coverings” would no longer be allowed in the open public galleries of the House of Representatives or the Senate. They would be directed to galleries usually reserved for noisy schoolchildren where they could sit behind sound-proof glass.
The 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.
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.”
“Procedures are still in place to ensure that DPS security manage these procedures in a sensitive and appropriate manner,” the statement said without elaborating.
Mr. Abbott later revealed that he had not been notified in advance that the ban was planned and had asked House Speaker Bronwyn Bishop to “rethink that decision.”
