Half of all Australians want to ban Muslim immigration: poll, by Mark Kenny in the SMH. Hot hot hot. Someone finally asked a real question. They did the survey twice because they couldn’t believe the results.

Look at the framing of how the SMH delivers this news to its readers, to diminish the impact and importance of the shock finding:

US President Barack Obama has hit back strongly at rising anti-immigration sentiment across America, Europe and Australia, as a new poll found half of all Australians want to ban Muslim immigration.

Declaring rich countries must do more not less, and that refugees are victims rather than the causes of violence, Mr Obama said governments proposing to build walls and close doors inevitably imprisoned their own citizens while ensuring they would be harshly judged by history.

Somehow it’s all about the leader of the PC world, not that half of Australians want to ban Muslim immigration. The SMH just cannot help themselves, or maybe they dare not disturb the feelings of the PC readers for fear of losing even more revenue. No wonder PC people have no idea of reality — even when their newspapers tell them some truth, they shade and color it, buried among feel-good PC stuff (the article is mainly about Obama).

It came as an Essential Research poll released on Wednesday found 49 per cent of Australians support a ban on Muslim immigration, including 60 per cent of Coalition voters, 40 per cent of Labor voters and 34 per cent of Greens voters.

The most common reasons for wanting a ban were fears over terrorism, and a belief that Muslim migrants do not integrate into society nor share Australian values. The poll was first conducted in early August and then repeated to ensure it was not a rogue.

“It’s too a big a number to say it’s an unrepresentative rump that should be shunned from polite society,” Essential pollster Peter Lewis told Fairfax Media. …

“It’s consistent with a sense that the fault lines in the current political climate are not between the two major parties – they’re between insiders and outsiders,” he told Fairfax Media.

No kidding Peter.

The poll found a high level of support for the One Nation firebrand, with two-thirds of voters agreeing she talks about issues other politicians are afraid of tackling, and 48 per cent endorsing a national debate about Muslim immigration. …

[The poll] highlights a significant hardening in anti-Muslim sentiment. A Roy Morgan poll conducted in October last year found broad support for Muslim immigration, with 28 per cent of respondents declaring themselves opposed.

hat-tip Joanne