Attorney-General George Brandis attacks Pauline Hanson for wearing the burqa in the Senate. Credit:Andrew Meares At this point, you might expect the successors to Freud and Jung to order a long session on the couch for anyone retailing such a hallucination. Or the drug squad to pounce, demanding to know who dropped the vat of LSD into the parliamentary water bubblers. But there it was. More to the point, there SHE was, Pauline Hanson, queen of the halal haters and Boadicea of the Ban the Burqa Brigade. An apparition in a full, black burqa, gliding in to the Senate.

Labor senators give Attorney-General George Brandis an unprecedented standing ovation while his Coalition colleagues remain seated following his criticism of Pauline Hanson. Credit:Andrew Meares She was trying to make a point. It was about as subtle as one of her maiden speeches. Having removed the garment, she demanded to ask a question of Senator Brandis. There are not actually any real rules about what people can wear in the chamber these days, and Hanson's arrival, aside from leaving Senator Duniam perplexed, clearly left Senate President Stephen Parry unsure how to proceed. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "I'm quite happy to remove this because this is not what should be in this Parliament," she quavered.

"My question to Senator Brandis, in light of our national security of this nation, will you work to ban the burqa in Australia? But George Brandis wasn't having it. "Senator Hanson, I am not going to pretend to ignore the stunt that you have tried to pull today by arriving in the chamber dressed in a burqa when we all know you are not an adherent of the Islamic faith," Senator Brandis seethed. "I would caution and counsel you with respect to be very, very careful of the offence you may do to the religious sensibilities of other Australians. "We have about 500,000 Australians in this country of the Islamic faith and the vast majority of them are law abiding, good Australians."

And as he damned the "appalling stunt", the Labor and Greens benches erupted in cheers and applause for the Attorney-General they normally love to hate. Loading The drug squad really ought to have been called. Follow us on Facebook