I have written before about my love for rebels and outlaws. As a general rule, I have no time for idolatry – the standard socially-acceptable definition of a hero does not fill me with reverence. We have been conditioned to view any act of bravery or defiance as legendary. It is only half the story – it’s also about the sacrifice you are willing to make: as the Last Poets eloquently said, ‘speak not of revolution until you’re willing to eat rats to survive’. The title is reserved for those who do not cave to the collective judgement of a Twitter hive mind and refuse to apologise. Indeed, double down. Not all heroes wear capes. Well, sometimes they do.

Pauline Hanson, the leader of the One Nation party, sparked outrage in parliament when she wore a burqa while in the chamber. The 71-year-old wore the Muslim dress after her attempt to have it banned was unsuccessful. Hanson entered the chamber wearing the head-covering shortly after being denied permission to propose a private member’s bill banning burqas and face coverings. Hanson was ordered to remove it, apologise, and leave the chamber. As a result of her defiance, she has been suspended from the Senate for seven consecutive sitting days, one of the harshest penalties against an Australian politician in recent history. As expected, the cultural relativists and race grifters who packed the upper chamber were apoplectic. Known for never missing an opportunity to shame a heretic, her colleagues lined up to blast her. Lidia Thorpe, who suffers from a form of racial apophenia – seriously, the woman could find racism anywhere – engaged in her usual pearl-clutching histrionics: ‘Get this racist woman out of here now. Get her out.… Who’s in charge here?’ The independent senator then had a hissy fit and threatened to shut down proceedings until she was removed. Mehreen Faruqi of the Greens denounced Hanson, calling her ‘a racist senator, displaying blatant racism.’ Fatima Payman was similarly disdainful of what Pauline had done. Payman, who shattered the mosque ceiling to become the first Muslim senator to wear a hijab, called Hanson’s actions ‘disgraceful’ and disrespectful to Islam. While Penny Wong, Labor Leader in the Senate, said she had ‘mocked and vilified an entire faith’.

Let me present a counterfactual. What if she underwent a Damascene conversion to Islam? She could have recited the Shahada and converted just before entering the Senate. In that scenario, her critics would have committed a hate crime. Don’t worry, I’m confident Allah would show compassion. Inshallah. Islam is a belief system, not a race. There are around two billion Muslims around the world, with many belonging to different ethnicities. When people criticise Islam, they are criticising an idea, not a specific racial group. There is a sizeable sector of society that is not racist, but just believes Islam is fundamentally antithetical to Western principles. These people – who believe that forced covering of a woman is wrong, and honour killings, often as a result of a woman’s refusal to accept an arranged (cousin) marriage are an abomination – are smeared as ‘Islamophobic’. No idea should be ring-fenced from criticism, including religion. Hanson strutted into parliament wearing the burqa to oppose a terrible idea. She was simply exercising her right to oppose it.

I find Hanson’s rise to prominence fascinating. The former fish and chip shop owner from Queensland has risen through the ranks to become a thorn in the side of elite consensus over the past thirty years. She was dumped as a candidate by the Liberals in 1996 due to being considered too controversial. Undeterred, she successfully ran as an independent MP, using her maiden speech in parliament to declare Australia is being ‘swamped by Asians’. Despite losing her seat in 1998, she took time out but continued courting controversy by withdrawing her house from the market in 2010 after backlash for stating she wouldn’t sell it to a Muslim. After several failed attempts, she was re-elected to parliament again in 2016 and once again used her first speech to assert that Australia was being swamped, this time by Muslims. Some may not like the language, but she has a point. Between 2011 and 2021, the Muslim population has increased by 71 per cent. With roughly one million followers, Islam is the second-largest religious group in Australia. While a majority of Muslims are peaceful, assimilated and law-abiding, many have horrific attitudes toward women. A 2019 study of Australian Muslims found 61 per cent of Muslim men want classical Sharia laws recognised in Australian law, while 25 per cent want to implement Sharia punishments. When Hanson stated that she wants to ‘stand for the freedoms and rights of women who are forced by their cultures or families to wear it,’ I thought of Mahsa Amini, the 22-yeeare-old Iranian woman detained in September 2022 by the religious morality police after she was accused of wearing an ‘improper’ hijab. Her death while in custody sparked widespread anti-hijab demonstrations, with thousands of women taking to the streets to burn hijabs, advocate for women’s rights and call for the dissolution of the Islamic Republic. These demonstrations resulted in over 22,000 arrests and more than 530 deaths.

Despite Hanson’s words, I don’t believe she is a ‘blood and soil’ ethno-nationalist. She is a populist, like every other Western party gaining ground in Europe, concerned that uncontrolled immigration is transforming the nation’s culture and demographics. If anything, she’s a moderate: wanting to slash immigration by half a million and compel new arrivals to wait eight years before becoming citizens and eligible for social security payments. It’s similar to the centre-left Danish Social Democrats.

Traditional parties are nervous. The One Nation party is polling at a record high, amid unrest over skyrocketing immigration numbers. A federal Redbridge survey showed the party receiving 18 per cent of the primary vote, a record high. Its support is now more than double the 6.4 per cent recorded in May’s general election. She said that she will be judged by voters, not the Senate. Defiant, strident and offensive. My kind of hero. Anyone who calls politicians a ‘bloody hypocritical mob’ gets my vote.