Australia should also take a stand and ban the wearing of breast covering garments in public places.

And no false teeth either!

As parliament especially should be an example of transparency: no coverings whatsoever are to be allowed in parliament house!

One area of this not explained or explored? Why is it that muslim men cannot be trusted with any woman who does not cover herself? The well known penchant for pack rape in the islamic community is horrific enough but also knowing that radicalism is rife in prisons is even worse.
Please tell me what this vile ideology has to offer our country and how long before any criticism is answered with criminal charges, courtesy of the odious Andrews & Co.
Blasphemy, do not make me laugh, I do not believe and I vote. I will vote against politicians who do not do as I want.

There are two terrorist groups operating in Australia , Chinese and gays; Muslims are not terrorists!

"This includes bans on female circumcision, on polygamy, and on forced or under-age marriage."
These affect children where the burqa is adult . Brendan O'Reilly may have been in a church which had interest in children. These also hit kids for speaking Aboriginal languages and talking about Dreaming which is un-Australian. Those kids used to get around without clothing but now they're just like normal well-covered politicians and bee keepers and Chinese in flu masks. Flu mask, Brendan ?

Yes. The burka is the most confronting thing ever to arrive in dying, multicultural Australia. And I'm glad that Brendan is not using the alien Arabic spelling!

The 'feminists' don't criticise it because they are s..t frightened if Muslims. They are all mouth only when it comes to tolerant Australians.

It is appalling that an ignoramus like George Brandis thinks that the burka is a religious garment. Women cannot expect justice in a country whose Attorney General supports suppression of their sex.

All experts seem to agree that the majority of communication is via non verbal means. From birth babies study their mothers faces, and the faces of others, trying to learn non verbal clues. Psychologists use body language as part of their diagnostic routine.
Covering someone from head to toe is the most effective way of ensuring that person is isolated from the rest of the community due to lack of ability to communicate effectively.
I cannot understand why anyone would wish to move to a strange country then deliberately isolate themselves from the rest of the community. It's no wonder their children learn to hate those who are different.

Telegraph and Mobiles blocked communication for centuries until banned by the Cultured Ones . After the Burkan Wills were drafted by P Hanson , mobs of blackened Muslimettes gathered at Canberra to burn their phones , letters, books, confession booths , shock jocks and on line opinions.

regressives (secular) ideology and Islam are both death cults hence sisters. Secularist murder the unborn while Islamist murder the ' infidel'. The glue that causes them to stick is their Christophobic natures. That explains why feminist/socialist defend the most oppressive religion for women ever.

Without reformation, Islam is a cult.

The discriminatory clothing for girls and women is designed to promote separateness and alienation. Also to 'prove' that the outside world is 'judgemental' and even 'dangerous' - through the free speech that may criticise such dress and behaviour, for example.

Why do feminists prefer Islam? Because feminists are authoritarians too.

'Why won't women's advocates support banning the burka?'

Feminism or any form of women's advocacy is a not one giant amorphous mass of singular thought.

Many feminists - particularly of the liberal mainstream left, e.g. hip, glamour feminist sites like Jezebel and feminist-friendly media outlets like The Guardian - favour the 'woman's choice' or 'religious freedom' view of the burka/niqab. More radical feminist sites like Feminist Current, the Gender Critical forum on Redditt and the feminist sub-forums on Mumsnet mostly reject these lib-fem arguments as internalised misogyny.

I do agree with the author though that the Left seems to be much more opposed to banning the burka/niqab. Increasingly, the Left seem to always be the first to welcome all forms of misogyny with open arms these days - porn/prostitution/BDSM/existentialist transgenderism or now, it seems, religious misogyny. Very sad, considering modern feminism mostly arose out of the Left.

Green is a terrible colour for men , we live in Australia not tribal drunken Ireland and Hotels should be shut down if they let decent hard-working punters drink Guinness.

While my view is, the burqa is an imposed medieval symbol of subjugation!

I won't tell people what they should or shouldn't wear, be they naturists on a nude beach? And couldn't we use a burqa and the occasional sack or two there? Or in the medieval slave markets of old Constantinople.

Men in dresses and makeup, bearded women, women wearing body hugging clothing so revealing as to leave little to the imagination and smiling at me! It's their call!

However, if we really disapproved, then all our ladies remain free to, wear chains or don a habit and cowl, replete with religious symbols, beads, crucifixes, as they push prams down the streets and supermarkets. Where these ladies push the symbol of medieval slave ownership/servitude in your face, given it is, nor was it universial dress in Islamic circles!

[Maybe if one or two took them off, we'd say nay, please put them back on, and be grateful when they did?]

And just like ritualistic stone age genital mutilation, limited in scope, region and preexisting culture!

Mocking that dress code, by choosing to wear clothing attached to other in your face, medieval religious absolutism might work, where disapproval makes them think this symbol of servitude is a free choice. Rather than imposed a few centuries ago in Saudi Arabia by, extremely Autocratic Wannabe Imams!

Even today, women going out alone or driving a car, is very rare there! When these ladies are forced to see themselves through other eyes, their pedantic absolutism might be moderated? Just don't hold your breath!
Alan B.

Hi Big Nanna

I agree with your thoughts.

However, I ask a question to all posters - how do you think the Sheriff Officers feel when confronted with a person wearing the burqa seeking to gain access to the Court system across the Nation?

I haven't heard any media seeking to hear of their concerns.

The Burqa has been established as "not" a religious garment, and in times of "terrorism alerts" - I believe we ALL should be able to walk about anywhere, whilst as the same time - show our face!

When Kimberle Crenshaw penned the term “Intersectionality” in 1989 it allowed feminists to umbrella a whole range of new groups of people who believed themselves to be discriminated against. If a person believed that they were discriminated against then they intersected with feminism and therefore granted victim status. Wearers of the burka fit into at least 4 feminist victim groups – women, muslim, the peculiar notion of race and minority in the population.

This is far too dangerous a topic for feminists to discuss.

A face covering is a face covering whatever the reason for its existence. If one kind of face covering is banned then all types should be. No exception should be made for religion.

If Muslim women want to be subordinate to men then they have a right to. That is the freedom we guarantee in this country. Whatever we might think about such subordination it is outweighed by the right to freedom that such women should have.

we should also ban those left wing cowards Antifa who cover their face, commit acts of violence and destruction and then claim victim status. I suspect a lot of getup clowns belong to these thugs. Strangley enough they have the hide to call others nazis.

//I cannot think of any (legal) custom, that is more confronting to Australians or more overtly signifies rejection of our values, than the practice of women having their faces secreted by a burka or niqab.//

Really? I can think of lots.

What about neo-nazism? Surely burqas are better than neo-nazis?

//Puzzlingly, the women's movement seems entirely absent from the debate.//

Yeah, funny that. For some reason it's always old men telling young women what they ought to wear. It wasn't so long ago that I can recall reading opinion pieces from old men railing against the loose moral standards of scantily clad women revealing their midriffs and exhorting them to cover up. Now they're telling them to take it off... you can leave your hijab on ;)

Trigger Warning: the following music video is not suitable for people with strong feminist sensibilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOotsq4soug

Maybe 'the women's movement' - whatever that is - is reluctant to stick its oar in because it believes in the Golden Rule (treat others as you would like to be treated), and it thinks it is big enough to dress itself without anybody else's help.

//The burka and niqab truly are medieval garments//

As a former medieval re-enactor, I dispute that claim. I was a younger man at the time, and I have distinct recollection of ample bosoms in low cut bodices :)

//and is widely perceived as a signal that the wearer seeks minimal interaction with those outside her family.//

Yeah, I think mind-reading is probably something best left to the experts, like Derren Brown.

//it must also be pointed out that failing to implement such a ban also affects the freedoms of those Islamic women that don't want to wear a burka or niqab.//

Nope, if they don't want to wear a burqa they don't have to. There is no authority that can force them to: this is Australia, not Saudi Arabia.

//Australia should also take a stand and ban the wearing of face covering garments in public places.//

The Government telling us how to dress? Sounds like the definition of a Nanny State.

Moslem men that favour the burka probably lost out in the arranged marriage raffle.

Humans are predictable in the ways they act. All ethnic groups, even the Greeks when they first came out here would marry the young Greek girls off to old Greek men rather than have them marry an Australian. It keeps the genetics closer to the old cells.
The old cells the parents, are locked in a nature driven cycle of genetic survival. They prefer the genetics are as close as possible to the old,cells, the parents, who have to die.
It is our only genetic Immortality here on this earth. All ethnic groups try to do this in one way or another. The burqa is one way of doing this. Segregating the women off from the other ethnic group or bloodline. I keep saying to the academics, it is simple biology and the race for genetic survival that drives this behaviour at the instinctive human survival level.

But because they have their heads up in the human superiority, (in Gods image realm)they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that mankind, like every other species on this planet, is actually
subject to the laws of nature, when it comes to genetic survival. Hence all the wars between races, races being those that are genetically closest to us, over territorial control.
Because our children need richly providing resources to see them prosper through the ages.
Hence all the wars over control of land and countries.
The covering of women by Muslim tribes especially when they move to areas where there are other
males of different, distant, genetics, is merely the parent, dying cells, keeping the new, children cells, genetically close. Kind of like the closest copy of the old cell, when it gets old and dies.

The academics refuse to see this, because they want to believe they, not nature is in control.

Jealous insecure men is the reason for the full body cover, and snip the clit just t'be sure.

Left wing Womens liberationists, can't condem the Burqa without admitting they
were wrong about multiculturalism and globalism.

So they prefer to ignore the contradiction between women's rights and the Muslim religion rather than renounce their ideological obsessions.

Dog whistling to the racists and bigots again. And didn't they respond swiftly! Where's the campaign to ban full face motor bike helmets, balaclavas, masks, scarves...heck clothing full stop!

Banning things doesn't make them go away and I can get any number of banned items. There is also the issue that freedom of religion is enshrined in the constitution and any ban could be illegal.

The feminists do not come out about moslem women because they are
more interested in being anti men.

Simple as that.

I admire and cherish liberal thoughts, but they have limits of application. And limits are different from culture to culture. If we do not consciously accept limits, we may be destroying liberalism.

Liberalism started, essentially, as a revolt to absolutitst political power, and we are uncounsciously apt to think that absolutist polical power is inimical and that liberal society can do without it and should ostracize it. But we cannot survive without absolutist power; democracy cannot exist nor survive without it.
In actuality democracy has inheritied it both in theory and practice from our preceding age or the age of Absolutist Monarchy when kings alone had absolutist power to exercise.
Democracy robbed them of it and has retained it ever since.

In Japan some of people's fundamental human rights are robbed or restricted. For instance, nobody is allowed to possess a gun except he/she is a policeman/woman no matter how you wished to have it like in America. Nobody is allowed to have more than a husband or wife at a time as in some countries; of course you can have as many mistresses or mistress-men if you wished.
In democratic Japan as in democratic Australia the parliament has the absolutist political power and it should have. For instance in Japan you must stop at a red traffic light no matter how you are allergic to the red colour; a few years ago the parliament passed a bill that raised the consumption tax from five to eight percent; it is absolutely binding no matter whether you are Japanese, Australian, Mexican.

//Does anyone know of a good trustworthy site that lets you do your own custom Polo Shirts ?/

Aye, it's:

www.learntodoyourownembroideryyoubigsgirlsblouse.com