The prime minister has joined senior MPs from both sides in cautioning against a push to ban the burqa, despite a poll showing half of Australians would support the move.
"I am not an admirer of the burqa - I worry that it used as a means of oppressing women - that's my reservation about the burqa," Mr Turnbull told Neil Mitchell on 3AW radio on Friday.
"Having said that, in this country, we don't tell people what to wear."
A Sky News/ReachTEL found 44 per cent of people strongly supported banning the burqa in public places, while a further 13 per cent supported it.
Of the more than 2800 people surveyed, 19 per cent strongly opposed a ban, 12 per cent opposed, while the rest were undecided.
Mr Turnbull said the federal parliament did not have the power to ban the burqa, but pointed out people were already required by law to show their faces for identity purposes in certain settings including court.
"But fundamentally we're a free society and people can wear - within limits - what they like." Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne said his concern about the burqa was that it isolated women from society.
"I think that is a dangerous thing," he told Nine Network on Friday.
"It's nothing to do with it being Muslim or any other kind of religion for that matter."
Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese conceded to being "uncomfortable" when the burqa was worn in public.
"I think people who aren't from that culture are uncomfortable with it," he said.
But he also warned bans doesn't work.
"There's a whole range of behaviour from people that have different cultures, different ethnicities, different religions that people might not be comfortable with. But that doesn't mean you go about banning it."
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who wore a burqa into the Senate last week, seized on the poll.
"Perhaps while the government are conducting their plebiscite on same sex marriage, we include the question as to whether Australians want to ban all full face coverings in government buildings and public spaces," she told News Corp.
