A poll showing almost half of Australians surveyed want to ban Muslim immigration shows Australian leaders have not done enough to foster cohesion, the Labor deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, has said.

The poll comes a week after One Nation senator Pauline Hanson’s first speech in the Senate, in which she reiterated her call for such a ban and has sparked a debate about the best way to tackle rising anti-immigration sentiment in Australia.

On Wednesday an Essential poll found 49% of respondents agreed with a ban on Muslim immigration, compared with 40% who opposed the idea.



The results appear to contradict the message the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, presented to a United Nations summit considering refugee policy, that Australia’s tough border policies have contributed to widespread social acceptance of immigration.

Responding to the poll on Radio National on Thursday, Plibersek said people “generally overstate the number of Muslims that we have in Australia – it’s a tiny fraction of our community”.

“What matters to me when we’re choosing people to become new Australians … is that they’re able to sincerely adhere to what we ask of Australian citizens – that they share our democratic beliefs, they respect our rights and liberties and uphold and obey our laws.

“Beyond that, I’m not interested in where they’re from, who they are, or what religion they follow,” she said.

Plibersek said she saw “great Muslim citizens who have made a huge contribution to Australia”.

She said the poll results did not mean Australians who favoured a ban on Muslim immigration were racist but rather “we’re not doing a good enough job as national leaders to bring harmony and cohesion to our community”.

“The thing that keeps us strong, and the thing that keeps us safe is harmony and cohesion.”

Asked in New York about the poll, Turnbull said: “Australia is the most successful multicultural society in the world and the foundation of that is mutual respect.”

In comments to Guardian Australia, the race discrimination commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, said Hanson was stoking division and appealing to xenophobia.

Soutphommasane has argued Australia can’t eradicate racism by telling its targets to “grin and bear it”; others including the executive director of Essential, Peter Lewis, warn contradicting people will not change their views.

In a statement on Facebook on Wednesday, the Greens senator Scott Ludlam said the poll results were “sobering” and the “most jolting” result was that 30% of Greens voters supported the ban on Muslim immigration.

Ludlam blamed the “politics of fear seeded by John Howard and honed by Tony Abbott” and “the enfeebled [Labor] opposition’s [failure] to take on the racially loaded asylum seeker debate”. He said “a number of Liberal MPs” were accommodating those views in the current parliament.

He said there was “little point in telling people they’re wrong to be concerned” because “they are concerned already”.

Ludlam said the challenge was to “offer alternatives” to those stoking division and suggested addressing economic inequality was part of the answer.

The newly elected One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts weighed in with inflammatory comments on Channel Ten’s The Project on Wednesday, including falsely claiming that broadcaster Waleed Aly condoned Islamic terrorism.

Asked whether Aly, the usual host of the show, should be deported because he was a Muslim, Roberts said it would be “nice if Waleed actually condemned and didn’t condone Islamic terrorism”.

Host Hamish Macdonald immediately contradicted Roberts: “Just for the record … I don’t think anyone needs to say anything, but quite clearly [Aly] does [condemn terrorism].”

In comments to Guardian Australia, Roberts claimed Aly had “sugar-coated” terrorism with statements noting the fact that it kills relatively few people and maintained this amounted to condoning it.

In other widely-reported comments Aly has unambiguously denounced Islamic State and the Paris attacks as “evil”.