Just prior to the last federal election in 2022, we surveyed Australians for their views on the important issues facing Australia using the Melbourne Institute-Roy Morgan Taking the Pulse of the Nation Survey, a nationally representative survey of Australian adults.
Authors
Ferdi Botha
Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, The University of Melbourne
A. Abigail Payne
Professor, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, The University of Melbourne
Top on the list were health care, open and honest government, economic stability, and housing affordability. The 2022 federal election then saw a change in government.
The survey asked Australians the same question in May 2024. While Australians still consider health services, economic stability, housing affordability, and open and honest government as the top four issues facing Australia, the magnitude of concern and the ranking of these issues have changed. Other issues have emerged as needing more attention.
Here's what Australians told us about their priorities and what that says about how the country is changing.
Shifting priorities
Across both years, 3,772 respondents were shown a list of 17 potential issues facing Australians and asked to indicate which they thought were important.
In 2022, 77.5% identified health services and hospitals and 64.3% thought housing affordability was important.
Two years later, the top four issues remained the most important, but their relative order has changed.
Health services remains at the top of the list, but with only 69.4% indicating it is an important issue. Economic stability (68.9%) and housing affordability (64%) rose in importance when compared to their rankings in 2022. Although now ranked fourth, open and honest government fell from 75.3% to 54.5% between 2022 and 2024.
Across the board, there is less agreement among Australians as to which issues are important. At the same time, there have been changes in the perceived prominence of other problems, such as declines in the proportion of Australians who think climate change or supporting the elderly should be addressed.
Do political colours matter?
Do the top issues vary based on political party affiliation? It's a mixed bag.
Health services and hospitals were in the top three issues for supporters of Labor and Greens parties and the Coalition in 2024. Economic stability is important for all party affiliations except the Greens. Coalition voters did not identify housing as a top three issue.
Instead, reducing crime is one of the top three issues for Coalition supporters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, addressing global warming and climate change is a top issue for those affiliated with the Greens.
How much has it changed in two years?
Two years isn't a long time, so what changed?
The matters with the largest fall in perceived importance were open and honest government (down 20.8 percentage points), support for the elderly (down 17.2 percentage points) and addressing global warming and climate change (down 16.4 percentage points).
By far the issue that increased the most in importance among Australians was an interest in reducing migration from other countries. Compared to 2022, the share reporting this matter as an important issue increased by 17.6 percentage points.
Are the changes in importance of these issues the same across political party preference?
We found a decline in importance of open and honest government for all party types but most significantly for the Labor Party, followed by the Greens.
Similarly, voters from all parties stated that addressing support for the elderly is a less important issue in 2024 than in 2022. Across the three major parties, the importance of this issue dropped between 15 and 20 percentage points.
Lower proportions of voters from all parties believed addressing global warming and climate change was an important issue. Support for addressing climate change declined most among Labor voters, from 79.2% in 2022 to 58.6% in 2024.
Notably, among Greens voters 79% believed in 2024 that fighting climate change was important for Australia, down from 90.4% in 2022.
Finally, as alluded to earlier, significantly more Australians believe reducing immigration was important. This sentiment has more than doubled among voters of most parties.
From 2022 to 2024, support for reduced immigration increased from 25% to 50.3% among Coalition voters, from 11.8% to 22.4% among Labor voters, from 5.2% to 15.7% among Greens voters. Support increased from 28.3% to 50.7% among voters from other parties (which include, for example, independents, One Nation and the United Australia Party).
Ferdi Botha is affiliated with the Australian Reserch Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course.
A. Abigail Payne receives funding under the ARC-COE Life Course Centre and the Paul Ramsay Foundation. These projects are unrelated to the subject of this article.
