Canberra: Australia's Parliament House on Monday lifted a short-lived ban on facial coverings including burqas and niqabs after intervention from the prime minister.
The government department that runs Parliament House announced on Oct. 2 that "persons with facial coverings" would no longer be allowed in the open public galleries of the House of Representatives or the Senate. They would be directed to galleries usually reserved for noisy school children where they could sit behind sound-proof glass.
The announcement was made a few hours before the end of the final sitting day of Parliament's last two-week session and had no practical effect.
Hours before Parliament was to resume on Monday, the Department of Parliamentary Services, or DPS, said in a statement that people wearing face coverings would again be allowed in all public areas of Parliament House.
It said face coverings would have to be removed temporarily at the security check point at the front door so that staff could "identify any person who may have been banned from entering Parliament House or who may be known, or discovered, to be a security risk."
"Procedures are still in place to ensure that DPS security manage these procedures in a sensitive and appropriate manner," the statement said without elaborating.
The ban on face veils in the public galleries had been widely condemned as a segregation of Muslim women and a potential breach of federal anti-discrimination law.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott later revealed that he had not been notified in advance that the ban was planned and had asked House Speaker Bronwyn Bishop to "rethink that decision."
The restriction had been authorised by Bishop, who has campaigned for a ban on Muslim head scarves in government schools, as well as Senate President Stephen Parry
The controversy came as the government attempts to assure Australia's Muslim minority that tough new counterterrorism laws and police raids on terror suspects' homes in recent months were directed at countering criminal activity, not any particular religion.
Security has increased at Parliament House since the government stepped up its terror warning to the second-highest level on a four-tier scale last month in response to the domestic threat posed by supporters of the Islamic State group. Australia is participating in the US-led coalition against Islamic State militants, with its warplanes flying combat missions in northern Iraq and special forces preparing to deploy in Iraq to help train Iraqi security forces.
