Opposition leader Tony Abbott and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard agree that the burqa is confronting and challenging but neither supports banning it. The Australians who rail against inequality, who protest shrilly against the impositions of tradition and fashion and men's preferences on western women, raise not an eyebrow against the tent-like garb that hides some Muslim women from the public gaze.
The burqa is an expression of inequality, and the telling evidence is that the men do not have their vision blurred by a square of mesh. But we don't need evidence when the express purpose of the burqa is to protect the honour of men by preventing other men glimpsing their women.
Few people in our community are more isolated in the world beyond their front door than the woman within the burqa, yet we justify our tolerance of this medieval imposition by describing its wearing as a matter of choice for the woman. But we know that the woman has, effectively, no choice, that to refuse to wear the burqa she would have to defy her culture, religion and the men who rule her life.
To speak against the burqa is often attacked as racism, but I believe that Australia's failure to ban the burqa is the racism. We don't see these women and therefore we don't see them as people, and we excuse our failure to protect them as tolerance of a culture we see as archaic. Smiling on difference is one thing, smiling on the confinement of women is quite another.
The burqa is offensive to our national principles of equality and on that basis alone should be banned. Humanitarian reasons should add urgency to that banning. What say you?
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