Right: In front of a building about to be used by a visiting anti-Muslim speaker, police and a lone burqa-clad protester illustrate the controversial nature of the debate.
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Arguments in favour of segregating those wearing burkas and niqabs
1. Obscured facial identity represents a heightened security risk
It has been claimed that people's faces need to be readily recognisable for a number of reasons. Firstly, if they are already on a register of criminal or terrorist suspects, facial recognition technology would allow this to be noted and their entry to Parliament or other places considered a security risk could be prevented. Secondly, if anyone behaves inappropriately in a secure area their photograph can be taken and they can then be denied entry in future, or, if necessary, pursued by law enforcement officers.
Palmer United Party Senator, Jacqui Lambie, has stated that no one with their faces covered should be allowed into any public place in Australia. Ms Lambie has claimed, 'I believe it's a national security issue and it's a security issue and it's just like anything else. It's like a motorbike helmet or it's like a balaclava. You cannot wear one. I will not allow you to wear that into my office because it's a security risk.'
The Rise Up Australia Party(RUAP), which also proposes the banning of burkas in all public places in Australia, claims on its Internet site, 'Some unscrupulous people in the UK have used face veils to disguise their identities during a department store robbery so that witnesses could not tell police if they were men or women. The BBC reported in June this year that six men wielding axes and wearing burkas raided Selfridges Department Store in a smash-and-grab attack.'
Also on their Internet site RUAP has stated, 'In countries such as Afghanistan, terrorists have used this as a disguise to evade the authorities and to get dangerously close to security checkpoints. The Telegraph reported in June last year that four French soldiers were killed, and five wounded when a male suicide bomber dressed in a woman's burka blew himself up in an attack initiated by the Taliban.'
Referring to potential threats in Australia, the RUAP has stated, 'A lack of limits placed on wearing face veils poses significant security risks at a time when violent crime and religious extremism is on the rise globally. If there are people who are misusing the face veil for their own purposes overseas, then the potential exists for it to occur in Australia.'
The Senate President, Stephen Parry, has referred specifically to the need to bar anyone with facial covering from the Parliament's public galleries. Senator Parry has stated, '"If there is an incident or someone is interjecting from the gallery, which as senators would know happens from time to time, they need to be identified quickly and easily so they can be removed from [sic] that interjection.
Or if they are asked to be removed from the gallery - and we need to know who that person is so they cannot return to the gallery, disguised or otherwise.'
2. Long, loose, voluminous garments represent a heightened security risk
It has been suggested by some critics of garments such as burkas and niqabs that they represent a security threat because being long and loose it is possible for people to carry weapons or explosive devices beneath them.
This claim was made by former federal parliamentarian, Pauline Hansen, on October 4, 2014, in a report published in The Courier Mail in which she stated, 'People wearing full face coverings, including women, are known to have hidden bombs underneath them which they've detonated in acts of terror.'
Ms Hansen has also suggested that this long, loose clothing, together with a facial covering, makes it possible for people to disguise their gender. This means that a man carrying weapons or explosives could present himself as a woman.
Ms Hansen has stated, 'I like to see a person's face and know who they are. How do I know it's not a man under there?'
Palmer United Party Senator, Jacqui Lambie has called for a total ban on the wearing of burkas in public places in Australia on the grounds that they are a threat to national security. She too has suggested that they could be used to conceal weapons. Her Facebook page formerly showed a photograph of a burka-clad woman holding a gun, beside a call for burkas to be prohibited in Australia. The image has since been taken down. Perhaps because it was later criticised for being of an Afghan police woman who was killed by the Taliban.
Referring to the policewoman whose photograph had been posted on her Facebook page, Ms Lambie stated, 'Far from desecrating her memory, my Facebook post honours her and the deadly struggle against brutal thugs and extremists.
As a police officer she would have known how easy it was to conceal weapons or bombs capable of killing large numbers of innocents under a burka. She would have known how much safer it would be in public if the burka was banned.'
3. There are those who claim that wearing the burka and the niqab is not a Muslim religious obligation for women.
There are those who maintain that the Quran does not require Muslim women to wear the burka or the niqab.
The Quran does not specifically mention the burqa or tell women to wear such extremely confining clothes. Instead, it instructs men and women to dress and behave modestly in society (24:31).
Haset Sali, a former president for the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, has claimed that the wearing of the burka has nothing to with Islam.
Sali has stated, 'Get rid of them (burkas and veils), they're primitive and have nothing to do with Islam. If you read the Koran it is very clear both women and men shall dress modestly and women shall cover their breasts.'
Contemporary Muslims base their authority regarding the burka on the hadith or collected traditions of life in the days of the prophet Muhammad. Many doubt the validity of these traditions and suggest that they do not reflect the will of Muhammad.
Critics of the burka and the niqab therefore maintain that they are not challenging anyone's religious freedom as the garment whose wear they wish to restrict is only culturally proscribed. In support of this claim it has been noted that there are parts of the Muslim world where the wearing of the niqab is actually prohibited.
In Malaysia, for example, the headscarf is known as a tudung, which simply means 'cover'. Muslim women may freely choose whether or not to wear the headscarf, except when visiting a mosque where the tudung must be worn; this requirement also includes non-Muslims.
Although headscarves are permitted in government institutions, public servants are forbidden from wearing the full-face niqab. A judgment from the then-Supreme Court of Malaysia cites that the niqab, or purdah, 'has nothing to do with (a woman's) constitutional right to profess and practise her Muslim religion', because Islam does not make it obligatory to cover the face.
Some proponents in Australia of restrictions being placed on where women can wear the burka or niqab similarly claim that Moslem women are not being forced to chose between religious obligation and involvement in Australian civic life. These garments, they claim, are culturally imposed. They are not a religious obligation.
4. Those wearing these garments have been segregated not banned
The new interim regulations do not represent an attempt to ban those wearing burkas or niqabs from the federal Parliament.
What these regulations require is that those who are wearing facial coverings while sitting in the public galleries be seated in the upper galleries behind a glass partition. Such segregation is not prohibition. People wearing these coverings are not being barred from the Parliament of their nation; they are simply being seated in a more secure area.
The Prime Minister made it plain that Parliament House is a 'secure building' and as such people could be required to identify themselves. However, he has not proposed that those wearing burkas or niqabs be banned from the public areas of Parliament House.
Mr Abbott has stated, 'In public areas in [Parliament House] people ought to be able to wear what they want.
In secure areas of this building, people need to be identifiable and that normally includes having your face visible.'
Mr Abbott appears to be making a distinction between the public and the private areas of the Parliament and to be arguing that in the public areas all Australians, irrespective of how they are attired, should be able to be present.
It also appears that banning those wearing facial coverings from the public areas of Parliament is not a priority for the federal police who have recently been given exclusive authority for security implementation in Parliament House.
New police commissioner, Andrew Colvin, has stated, 'We need to look at the circumstances [regarding the wearing of face coverings in Parliament House]. Where it is appropriate for us to make certain identification, we should do that. I am not going to buy into whether it should be banned or not [in Parliament House].'
5. People wearing any type of facial covering will be given segregated seating
It has been pointed out that the recent directions relating to access to the public galleries in Parliament House do not discriminate against Muslim women as they makes no reference to the forms of clothing which some traditionally wear. The focus of the interim regulation is on 'facial coverings'. No specific reference is made to either niqabs or burkas.
The 'security controls' issued on October 2, 2014, included the following provision: 'Persons with facial coverings entering the galleries of the House of Representatives and Senate will be seated in the enclosed galleries. This will ensure that persons with facial coverings can continue to enter the Chamber galleries, without needing to be identifiable.'
A spokeswoman for Parliament House told BuzzFeed News that women wearing burkas and niqabs would likely be targeted by the new rules, but 'it's not religious, it's about any veil'
It was reported on October 1, 2014, in The Sydney Morning Herald, that the Prime Minister's principal adviser, Peta Credlin, supported burkas and niqabs being prohibited from federal Parliament.
However, Ms Credlin is reported to have expressed support for the burka to be banned for the same reason that motorbike helmets and balaclavas are banned from Parliament. The concern centres on facial coverings, of whatever type, as a threat to security. Such a preference is clearly not singling out burkas and niqabs as cultural or religious markers and discriminating against them. It is the need to remove any form of face covering so that a person who represents a potential threat can be identified which seems to have preoccupied Ms Credlin. She was also said to have indicated that she supported people's right to wear the burka in public.