Members of the Greens and the crossbench are firing back at Pauline Hanson as she entered the Senate chamber wearing a burqa after she failed to raise a motion to have the garment banned.

Pauline Hanson wears a burqa in the Senate on Monday.Dominic Lorrimer

“She is disrespecting a faith ... it’s absolutely unconstitutional. This needs to be dealt with immediately before we proceed,” senator Fatima Payman said.

The chair found that Hanson’s dress is allowed, and proceedings should not be stopped.

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe rose to her feet and yelled out: “This can’t be happening. Get this racist woman out of here now. Get her out. Get her out … who’s in charge here?”

Hanson also wore a burqa in the Senate on August 17, 2017. Andrew Meares

“I’ll shut down this senate until she is removed,” Thorpe said.

Thorpe yelled at Labor senators to stand up and speak on what was going on in the chamber.

“Racism should not be the choice of the Senate. This is a racist senator,” Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi said. “There is a person in here ridiculing my religion.”

Hanson’s renewed attempt to ban the burqa was slammed by Australia’s Islamophobia envoy, who said the move would worsen harassment, threats of rape and violence against Muslim women in Australia.

The One Nation leader performed the same stunt in 2017 and it was dubbed by the then attorney-general, George Brandis, as an “appalling thing to do”.

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5.38pm on Nov 24, 2025

What happened today

By Carla Jaeger

Thanks for tuning in to our national news live blog. Here’s what we covered today:

A new search for missing four-year-old boy Gus Lamont is about to ramp up, almost two months after he vanished from his family’s remote outback farmhouse in South Australia.
Pauline Hanson was suspended from the Senate after she wore a burqa into the chamber on Monday afternoon, the second time in her parliamentary career she has performed the stunt. Read more from federal political reporter Nick Newling here.
The Coalition used much of question time to sledge Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s absence, and referred to him as Australia’s “part-time energy minister”. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave an uncharacteristically short response to a question on the government’s abandonment of gambling reforms.
A Brisbane court was shown footage from the harrowing moment two Sea World helicopters crashed on the Gold Coast in January 2023, during the opening day of an inquest into the fatal crash. Read more from Brisbane Times crime reporter Chloe Read.
The Trump administration backflipped on its controversial 28-point peace plan for Ukraine following backlash from European leaders.

We’ll be back tomorrow with continuing live coverage of news in Australia and around the world.

5.06pm on Nov 24, 2025

‘Slender Man’ accused missing, US police say

By AAP and Carla Jaeger

Wisconsin: One of the two females charged in the 2014 Slender Man stabbing of a classmate, is on the run, US police say.

Morgan Geyser, now aged 23, cut off her ankle monitoring device and at the weekend left a group home in Wisconsin, where she had been placed on her release from a psychiatric facility.

Morgan Geyser in a Wisconsin courtroom in January.AP

Geyser admitted to nearly killing her classmate, Payton Leutner, in a wooded part of a park near Milwaukee in 2014, in a frenzied attack aimed at pleasing the online horror character Slender Man – a tall, gangly faceless creature with a demon-like appearance.

Madison police issued an alert on Sunday for Geyser, saying she was last seen about 8pm on Saturday (local time) with an adult acquaintance.

“If you see Geyser, please call 911,” the alert said, adding that she had cut off a “Department of Corrections monitoring bracelet”.

Geyser was placed in a group home this year after being granted conditional release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. She was sent to the psychiatric institute in 2018 after pleading guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison.

Geyser’s lawyer, Tony Cotton, said he did not know what had happened with his client and urged Geyser to turn herself in. He said it was unclear how she had managed to break out of the home, and who had helped her to do so.

Geyser and co-offender Anissa Weier – who were both aged 12 at the time of the attack – were charged as adults in 2017 with first-degree intentional homicide on the attack on Leutner.

The pair stabbed Leutner 19 times and left her for dead in a park during a sleepover party.

At the time of the attack, both girls told detectives they were acting to appease or impress Slender Man, an online urban legend the girls said they believed would harm them or their families if they didn’t kill Leutner.

Read the full article here.

4.45pm on Nov 24, 2025

Nationals senator Matt Canavan slams burqa stunt

By Paul Sakkal

Nationals senator Matt Canavan, one of the Coalition’s most conservative MPs, has slammed Pauline Hanson’s burqa stunt, arguing it was a desperate attention-seeking stunt.

Canavan said respectful points could be made about migration, but Hanson was acting improperly.

“Don’t vote for them … They only live if you give them attention and look at them,” Canavan said on ABC TV.

“I don’t like this type of politics. This is disrespectful to Muslim Australians. I don’t support ridiculing people.”

4.42pm on Nov 24, 2025

Mineshafts new focus as search for missing boy widens

By AAP

South Australia: A new search for a missing four-year-old boy is about to ramp up, almost two months after he vanished from his family’s remote outback farmhouse.

Augustus “Gus” Lamont was last seen by his grandmother in the late afternoon of September 27, playing on a mound of dirt outside a sprawling sheep station in South Australia’s mid-north. He has not been seen since.

August “Gus” Lamont was last seen about 5pm on September 27.SA Police

Intensive searches comprising hundreds of team members, spanning 470 square kilometres and involving aerial support as well as mounted units, have all failed to find the young boy.

Police drained and searched a dam at the remote outback farmhouse and sheep station.

A renewed search will begin on Tuesday, focusing on six mine shafts near the Oak Park Station area.

The search is expected to last up to three days and will involve officers from STAR Group and Task Force Horizon, who will use specialised equipment to search the mines, police said in a statement on Monday.

The uncovered and unfenced shafts are located between 5.5 and 12 kilometres from the Oak Park homestead in areas not searched on foot by police.

Police said they were not previously aware of the location of the sites.

Deputy Police Commissioner Linda Williams said the force would not stop searching until every avenue had been explored.

“These searches will either locate evidence or eliminate these locations from further investigation by the task force,” she said.

Police drained and searched a dam in late October, ruling out the possibility Gus drowned on the property.

The initial 10-day air and ground search was one of the largest SA Police has undertaken.

It took SA Police about 3½ hours to drain 3.2 million litres of water from the 4.5 metre-deep dam, which is 600 metres from the homestead.

“Police divers have thoroughly searched the main dam and the holding dam, including clearing of weed beds, however, there was nothing of significance found,” police said in a statement.

The water was then pumped back into the dam.

The initial 10-day air and ground search at the property, about 40 kilometres south of Yunta, was one of the largest undertaken by SA Police.

A four-day search within a 5.5-kilometre radius of the homestead in October concluded without any evidence being found.

Police said further aerial imaging within a 10-kilometre radius of the homestead would take several weeks to complete.

Gus’ family members have “continued to co-operate fully with police and are being supported by a victim contact officer”, police said.

4.29pm on Nov 24, 2025

Confusion after Hanson booted from Senate

By Nick Newling

Following the naming of Senator Pauline Hanson, groups of senators are milling around the entrance to the chamber discussing what comes next.

The rules of the Senate say that if a suspended senator attempts to re-enter the chamber the president can order a parliamentary officer – know as the usher of the black rod – to escort them from the chamber.

Hanson is not allowed to enter the chamber for the rest of the day and was seen retreating into her office with other One Nation senators and United Australia Party’s Ralph Babet.

They have begun returning to their offices, but there’s a sense of confusion about what may come next.

4.15pm on Nov 24, 2025

Thorpe declares Hanson racist; One Nation leader leaves Senate

By Nick Newling

Senator Lidia Thorpe has repeatedly called for Pauline Hanson to leave the chamber, calling the One Nation leader “racist”.

Thorpe rebuked the fact that she was asked to leave the chamber when she was suspended, but Hanson had yet to leave.

Hanson has risen to leave and is attempting to talk to the public gallery about her attempts to ban the burqa.

“It is not a religious requirement to wear the burqa,” she said as she left, before a number of members of the public gallery applauded her. One called out, “Onya, Pauline.”

4.11pm on Nov 24, 2025

Hanson ordered to leave Senate

By Nick Newling

Pauline Hanson has got to her feet and demanded to be heard, after the president of the Senate demanded she leave for being disrespectful.

The ruling came after Foreign Minister Penny Wong moved a motion to have Hanson removed.

Pauline Hanson was ordered to leave the Senate over her “disrespectful” burqa stunt.Dominic Lorrimer

The Senate overwhelmingly voted to have Hanson removed. One Nation senators claim that a division on the matter is necessary.

“You are so vile, you are not doing your job properly,” Hanson said to Senate president Sue Lines.

Hanson was earlier ordered to remove the burqa and leave the chamber or face suspension.

Lines said that a previous ruling on Hanson’s wearing of the burqa, which said wearing religious items was disrespectful, would still be held.

Moments earlier, Liberal senator Anne Ruston “respectfully suggested” that Hanson address the chamber in a different manner, after Wong rebuked the One Nation leader.

Wong asked the chair to rule that Hanson’s conduct was disorderly, and quoted George Brandis, who as a Liberal senator rebuked the One Nation leader the last time she wore the garment in 2017.

“Whatever our own beliefs may be, the sort of disrespect you are engaging in now is not worthy of the Australia Senate,” Wong said. “It should not be allowed.”

Calls are coming from both sides of the chamber, but Lidia Thorpe, Mehreen Faruqi and Fatima Payman are the most strident voices in the room.

Payman has been getting into a back and forth with Nationals senator Matt Canavan, who is sitting slightly behind Hanson in her burqa.

“We have a right to be in a safe workplace and that racist is making it unsafe,” Thorpe said. “Someone should rip it off her head.”