It included comments such as ‘The issue hit the news with security measures announced in Canberra forcing women with head and facial coverings to sit in a glassed-off area of the Parliament public gallery’; ‘If we’re going to the extent of banning clothing, what’s to stop us from banning tattoos, leather jackets, or black clothing?”; and “Banning the burqa will not stop Australia being attacked by extremists. Banning the burqa will steal our freedoms. And from there, it’s a slippery slope.”
There is no suggestion that the proposed security measure has any religious or racial agenda, but is purely because there is no way to identify a person who is wearing a burqa.
How is this proposal any different to the existing law that does not allow any person wearing a motorcycle helmet to enter any garage, bank, shopping centre and so forth purely because they cannot be identified?
Is this motorcycle helmet law also “stealing our freedoms” as suggested by the editorial, or is it just common sense?
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PETER BAKER, Mandurah.