Pauline Hanson has lost an online poll about her proposed citizenship changes by almost 90 per cent.
The staggering result, revealed on Thursday, comes after Senator Hanson warned that some organisations - including international groups - were working to skew the numbers.
The Senate's Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee had created an online poll using SurveyMonkey to gauge public interest in One Nation's proposal to make permanent residents wait eight years before applying for Australian citizenship. Other changes have also been proposed.
In results published Thursday, 126,322 (89.8 per cent) respondents did not support the bill and just 14,324 (10.2 per cent) did.
The poll only asked for an email address, a name and a “yes” or “no” vote on Senator Hanson’s draft legislation.
Before the poll closed on 27 April, Senator Hanson said she became concerned when she saw the poll shared on foreign Facebook pages.
Pages run by foreign embassies in Australia, including Brazil’s commission in Brisbane, also shared the link.
“I think Australians should have their say in this, not foreign interference,” Senator Hanson told Channel Seven’s Sunrise program.
“And I’ll tell these foreigners: Keep out of our politics and keep out of our laws.”
Senator Hanson shared a series of links to “evidence” of the interference on her Facebook page, which includes a page called “Hazaras in Indonesia”, referring to an ethnic minority group, urging its followers to “SAY NO TO UNFAIR CITIZENSHIP BILL.”
She also said the Senate committee should “disregard” the results.
The committee’s Coalition chair, Senator Ian MacDonald, told ABC News the Secretariat recommended the online poll to reduce an influx of long-form written submissions.
"In a similar bill to this one that occurred quite recently, we had over 12,000 submissions," Senator MacDonald said.
"That involves... a lot of clerical work, taking submissions, reading it, putting it online."
The Turnbull government itself recently tried to increase the wait time for permanent residents to four years, but the bill was blocked in the Senate, mostly because of crossbench opposition to a tougher English language test for citizenship.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has confirmed the government will attempt to re-introduce the legislation this year.
