OPINION

The burqa, a full-length, head-covering garment worn almost exclusively by Afghan women in Afghanistan, is not a frequent sight on Capital Hill. But that hasn't stopped various members of Parliament calling for its ban.

When it comes to issues pertinent to the public, it's akin to mounting a campaign to stop echidnas from acquiring drivers' licences, or calling for a prohibition on elephant hunting in Tasmania.

As a politician, if you're going to take umbrage at burqas, it seems the best qualification you can have is to hail from an electorate in which the religious garment is unlikely to ever pose a problem, security or otherwise, for the simple reason that it is never seen.

Let us examine our list of top burqa-bashers.

Leading the charge is LNP backbencher George Christensen. His electorate is Dawson, of which the proud town of Mackay is the population centre. Mackay, nearly 1000 kilometres north of Brisbane, is known for many things, notably its sugar industry, but not for being a flowering outpost of Islamic culture.

Cory Bernardi, the Liberal senator and avowed anti-burqaist, lives in Adelaide's leafy suburbs, where traditional modes of Islamic dress are thin on the ground.

Then there is Jacqui Lambie, who of course comes from Tasmania, where Muslim people comprise 0.2 per cent of the population. The burqa risk there is about as great as the Ebola one.

Now the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Peta Credlin, a Canberra-dweller, has said she is sympathetic to a burqa ban in Parliament House. On security grounds alone, mind. She is reported to have urged Mr Christensen, and others living under the dark shadow of the burqa threat, to make a submission along those lines to Speaker Bronwyn Bishop.

Far from dodging this sensitive issue, on Wednesday the Prime Minister headbutted it straight-on.

"Now I've said before I find it a fairly confronting form of attire and frankly I wish it weren't worn," he said of the burqa, which prompted people to make unkind remarks about the collective trauma experienced when Mr Abbott appears in public in his Speedos.

He said that people should be identifiable in a secure building, such as Parliament, but then remarked, "Has anyone ever sought entry to this building so attired? As far as I'm aware, no."

So why were we talking about it, exactly? Could it be that the Prime Minister's office was seeking to distract a guileless public from its $30-odd billion-worth of budget measures that look destined to fail in the Senate? Could it be that they wanted to talk about something, anything, other than the fact that it is now October and the May budget is still hanging around like an unpassed gallstone?

The burqa-clad woman, elusive though she is, makes an excellent straw man.

SMH