Demonstrators demanding the closure of the Parramatta Mosque hold placards during a rally outside the mosque in western Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2015.
Demonstrators demanding the closure of the Parramatta Mosque hold placards during a rally outside the mosque in western Sydney, Australia, October 9, 2015. Reuters/David Gray

Almost half of Australians support Senator Pauline Hanson’s ban on Muslim immigration. A new poll of 1,000 people has found that 49 percent of them would not want Muslims refugees to enter Australia.

On Wednesday, Essential Research released the results of the poll, which sees 34 percent of Greens voters, 60 percent of Liberal voters and 40 percent of Labor voters supporting Muslim ban. Out of those people, 40 percent of them thought that Muslims “do not integrate into Australian society, 27 percent said Muslims are “terrorist threat,” and 22 percent claimed that Muslims “do not share our values.”

Only 40 percent are opposed to Muslim ban, while 11 percent ticked “don’t know.”

According to the Guardian, Essential learnt of the findings in August. However, it ran a second check just to be sure of the numbers.

“This is not a ‘basket of deplorables’ who sit outside the confines of polite society, this is 49 percent of the men and women who make up our nation,” Peter Lewis, director of Essential Media Communications, said. “Yes, they are more likely to vote Coalition or ‘other’ but 40 percent of Labor voters and one third of Greens agree, too. Look around you right now, there are people in your workplace, in your street, on your train, who agree with Hanson.”

Lewis wrote in his opinion piece in the Guardian that even normally tolerant Australians support a Muslim ban when they are unease about everything. Supporting a ban is one thing that they can understand and perhaps even somewhat control, unlike other issues such as taxes and lack of job security.

The Essential poll came a week after Hanson’s maiden speech in the Senate, in which she said Australia must stop Muslim immigration and the building of mosques and Islamic schools. According to the One Nation leader, the country was “in danger of being swamped by Muslims.”

This isn’t the first time Hanson has claimed Australia is in danger of being inundated by foreigners. In her maiden speech in 1996 as a member for Oxley, she claimed Australia was in danger of being “swamped by Asians.”

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