As she sheltered from the wind to eat lunch on the Cronulla beachfront, Paris Smith had a strong view about One Nation leader Pauline Hanson wearing a burqa in federal Parliament.
"An absolute joke," she said. "Disgusting and ridiculously offensive."
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Fuming Brandis attacks Hanson over burqa stunt
Attorney-General George Brandis defends Australia's half-million Muslims in a response to Senator Pauline Hanson's burqa stunt.
The 19-year-old restaurant worker, a former student at Cronulla High, was just as vocal about Senator Hanson's call for the burqa to be banned.
"People should be allowed to do what they want to do," she said. "If they want to wear a burqa, they can wear a burqa.
"And as a young person, I'd prefer someone wear a burqa than be self-obsessed looking at themselves in the mirror every 20 minutes trying to fix their hair, which every other girl is doing."
In an electorate that ReachTEL polling showed was strongly supporting One Nation in June – 16.7 per cent compared to a national average of 11 per cent in Treasurer Scott Morrison's seat – it was difficult to find backers for Senator Hanson's burqa stunt, though there was spirited debate about whether the garment should be banned in Australia.
Senator Hanson's strongest supporter was retiree Brian Turnbull, a past One Nation voter who was reading a thriller in the sun on the surf club steps.
He thought Hanson's stunt was "good" for drawing attention to what he saw as Muslims being reluctant to integrate into the Australian community.
"If they want to live here, they should live the way we live," he said.
But others in a suburb that sparked a race debate with the 2005 Cronulla riots had more nuanced takes on Senator Hanson's stunt.
"It was awful," Maureen Lincoln, a former supermarket staff trainer from Padstow Heights said. "I don't mind Pauline Hanson but I think she was a bit silly."
But the sometime Liberal voter also believed the burqa should be banned, saying: "I used to work in retail and when they came through the shop, you didn't know who they were ... If they live in our country, take our laws."
Her daughter, police detective Jane Prior, believed Parliament was the wrong forum for the stunt. But while supporting a burqa ban, she realised this came across as racist.
"People move over here, especially the refugees, for a safer country and to have the freedoms that Australia offers," she said. "However we need to keep our country safe.
"And there are things that people can do under that burqa that can result in terrorist attacks."
Having lived in Nigeria, Andrew Ronald, head of sales for an IT company, thought Senator Hanson's actions "a total waste of Parliament's time" but considered the burqa divisive.
"I've lived in a country of 140 million people, split between Christian and Muslim," he said. "I've seen that it doesn't work."
But while critical of Senator Hanson's stunt, Colin James, a casual worker from Oatley, thought the burqa was fine except when national security was affected.
"We pride ourselves on being a very diverse multicultural country but these sort of things don't help the cause," he said. "What she's done has set us back a little bit."