Pauline Hanson’s decision to appear in the Senate wearing a burqa once again has sparked significant controversy. Her actions were deemed inappropriate by many, particularly within the Muslim Australian community, as they reduced religious attire to a mere costume for making a political statement. Moreover, this incident has dragged the Senate into yet another divisive cultural debate, overshadowing the pressing issues that deserve attention.

In response, Hanson faced suspension for the day and received widespread condemnation from various quarters. However, it’s important to recognize that some of her critics are not exactly paragons of parliamentary decorum themselves.

Much of the backlash comes from politicians who have long transformed the parliamentary space into a theater for their own dramatic displays, complete with props, costumes, and planned walkouts. The situation is a classic case of hypocrisy, where those in precariously fragile positions are quick to criticize others for similar transgressions.

But let’s not pretend the people lining up to denounce her are guardians of some long-lost era of parliamentary decorum.

A lot of the outrage is coming from politicians who have spent years turning the place into a stage for their own props, costumes, and choreographed walkouts.

Hypocrisy is thy name: people in very fragile glass houses furious that someone else is throwing stones.

Hanson’s latest effort is a rerun of her 2017 stunt, minus any originality. Back then she was denied leave to introduce a bill to ban full-face coverings.

Minutes later she walked back into the Senate wearing one, then ripped it off to make her case.

The Senate had to be shut down while everyone fought over how offended they were, and she was ultimately bundled out for the day.

During yesterday’s rerun, Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi called it racist and Islamophobic.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson storms the Senate in a burqa  again reigniting old culture wars and sparking fresh fury over a political stunt seen as Islamophobic and attention-seeking

Pauline Hanson’s political theatre returns: a burqa, a stunt, and a calculated bid to bait critics into boosting her profile

Fatima Payman said it was disrespectful to Muslims. Penny Wong lectured Hanson about the privilege of representing Australians of every faith.

But the sudden concerns about the dignity of parliament are a bit rich from a cohort that has treated the chamber as a venue for performance art whenever it suits them.

Only a few months ago, Sarah Hanson-Young marched into the Senate with a decapitated Tasmanian salmon in a plastic bag and waved it around to protest salmon farming laws.

The president ruled the fish out of order as a prop and ordered it removed.

The difference for Greens critical of what happened yesterday but supportive of what their colleague did earlier this year seems to be that they liked the message attached to the salmon stunt.

Faruqi herself has been formally sanctioned by the Senate this year for staging a Gaza protest in the middle of the Governor-General’s address, holding up a sign declaring ‘Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them. Sanction Israel’.

She refused to apologise, insisting she was being silenced for speaking out.

Many of the same Greens who now want Hanson crucified over a burqa were at that time defending the right to stunt-their-way through formal occasions if the cause was righteous enough.

If you’re a Green, a prop is a sombre protest. If you’re Pauline Hanson, however, it’s an intolerable breach of parliamentary norms.

In truth, none of the above is acceptable; all of it contributes to the lost respect modern politicians suffer from.

Then there is Lidia Thorpe, whose entire political persona in Canberra has been built around disrupting parliamentary rituals. She was one of Hanson’s loudest critics yesterday.

Thorpe previously altered the oath of allegiance to describe the late Queen as a ‘coloniser’, was told to do it again properly, and wore the rebuke as a badge of honour. She heckled King Charles in Parliament House, shouting ‘you are not our king’ before being removed by security.

Now she is under AFP investigation after telling a pro-Palestine rally she would ‘burn down Parliament House to make a point’, later explaining it was just a metaphor, which it obviously was, but a spectacularly reckless one for a sitting senator to deliver.

If Hanson’s burqa is a costume stunt (and it is), then so is Thorpe’s carefully curated radicalism in the Great Hall, so is Hanson-Young’s fish, so is Faruqi’s sign.

The props change, the script doesn’t, the hypocrisy of those in office comes to the fore.

What makes the reaction to Hanson’s latest effort so jarring is that Greens senators, in particular, are among the most frequent abusers of these same unwritten rules.

They have pioneered the tactic of turning every formal occasion into a visual protest. Now, because the symbol in question is one they find offensive and the politics are hostile to their own, we are told there must be a crackdown on stunts in the chamber.

Scott Morrison’s lump of coal remains one of the most infamous pieces of parliamentary theatre of the modern era.

Lidia Thorpe, who has heckled the King, altered her oath, and joked about ‘burning down Parliament House’ is one of Hanson’s loudest critics 

As treasurer, he happily paraded a large glossy chunk of coal around the House, reassuring MPs: ‘This is coal. Don’t be afraid’.

It had been specially prepared by the Minerals Council so no one would get their hands dirty.

None of this gets Hanson off the hook; it just points to the hypocrisy of her critics. And there is an added layer of ugliness when the prop is a religious garment.

Hanson’s move was designed to bait Muslim Australians and then claim martyrdom when they and their supporters objected.

It will make life harder for women in burqas minding their business on suburban streets, who will now be reminded yet again that their clothing is a national political battleground.

But Hanson’s actions yesterday were also damaging to her own cause. Self-interest alone should have checked her.

One Nation is polling at levels that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Recent Newspoll numbers have the party at a record 15 per cent of the primary vote, with other national polling putting it even higher.

That surge is coming straight out of the Coalition’s hide, with the Coalition’s primary vote now languishing in the mid to low 20s, with disaffected conservatives looking for alternatives to vote for on immigration, climate, and cultural issues.

In this environment, One Nation has a genuine chance to move from protest party to something approaching a mainstream force on the right.

It can credibly talk about picking off lower house seats in regional Queensland and northern NSW, not to mention picking up the balance of power in the Senate.

Nationals MPs are nervous enough that Barnaby Joyce has openly mused about a switch. He even shared a meal with Hanson after yesterday’s stunt.

For that project to work, however, the party needs to look more like a serious (if hard-edged) political alternative, and less like a permanent fringe protest movement.

Voters flirting with One Nation as a vehicle to send a message, but who still want some basic stability, need reassurance that handing them their first preference vote won’t be an act of madness.

Hanson’s burqa routine sends the opposite signal. It drags everyone back to the worst caricature of One Nation in the 1990s and her first burqa stunt in 2017: angry, divisive, obsessed with minority dress codes rather than cost-of-living pressures.

The sort of voter who is thrilled by yesterday’s imagery is already rusted on. They were never going to park their vote with the Liberals or Nationals in the first place.

All this does is spook the more cautious conservatives now contemplating a shift away from the major parties.

If One Nation wants to be more than an angry punctuation mark in Australian politics, it has to grow outwards, not inwards.

That means fewer costumes and more serious policy. It means demonstrating that you can use your growing presence in the Senate responsibly, so that voters in regional seats can imagine you holding the balance of power in the House as well as the Senate, without flinching.

A senator turning up in a burqa for the cameras is the opposite of that.

Hanson’s critics are entitled to call out the stunt for what it is. But until they take a harder look at themselves, their moral outrage will continue to be tainted by hypocrisy.