It would be a sad day for this nation if the policy of appeasement being advocated by some within the Turnbull government towards Pauline Hanson and her followers resulted in an attempt to limit Muslim immigration.
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Such a possibility cannot be ruled out in view of repeated statements by senior Liberals that the views of Hanson and her supporters deserve to be respected and the publication of an opinion poll on Thursday indicating almost 50 per cent of respondents supported a ban on Muslim immigration.
It does not appear as if that survey, whose results were so unexpected the organisers, Essential Poll, ran it twice, was unduly influenced by Ms Hanson's most recent maiden speech in which she claimed it was now Muslims, not Asians, who were overrunning the country.
That claim, incidentally, rings a tad hollow given there are currently more One Nation voters in Australia [593,013] than there are followers of the prophet, who make up just two per cent of the population.
Australia has an unfortunate history of allowing immigration policy to be driven by public opinion with the both the White Australia policy and Arthur Calwell's post-war crackdown on the Jewish humanitarian intake standing as clear examples of this.
Calwell set a maximum quota of 25 per cent of Jews per migrant ship in 1947 following an opinion poll which found 58 per cent of those surveyed opposed their entry.
One positive sign the government may show leadership by challenging public perceptions and embracing a ''big picture" view of the world is Malcolm Turnbull's recent celebration of strength through diversity at the United Nations summit on immigration in New York.
He said "diversity is an investment against marginalisation and extremism".
While much has been made of the fact about 60 per cent of Coalition voters, 40 per cent of Labor voters and even 34 per cent of Greens voters support a Muslim immigration ban, these figures have drawn attention away from the more significant difference in views across the generational divide.
Only 28 per cent of those polled aged between 18 and 24 supported a ban on Muslims; 58 per cent were opposed.
This is not dissimilar to the recent Brexit vote in the United Kingdom where most older, more conservative voters supported the leave campaign while most young people, alert to the career and travel opportunities offered by membership of a union of diverse nation states, wanted to stay.
The great irony is that Muslim links with Australia predate the arrival of Europeans by centuries.
A map of the Java Sea drawn by a Muslim cartographer around 820 AD clearly showed the Cape York Peninsula, the Gulf of Carpentaria and Arnhem Land.
Muslim traders from Sulawesi were visiting northern Australia to collect sea cucumber [trepang] at least 100 years before the arrival of Captain Cook and an Indian Muslim convict arrived in Sydney with the Third Fleet in 1791.
We would do well to reflect on the positive impacts those first Muslim arrivals had on this country before attempting to limit their place in the current immigration mix.
