At the end of another year living with COVID-19, heading into the summer break and a federal election campaign, health continues to lead top of mind concerns for Australians, followed by the environment and the economy.
True Issues is a research tool to assist Australian businesses to understand where their issues truly sit within the contemporary issues landscape. This poll was conducted as an online survey between 22 – 24 November among a representative national sample of 1,000 Australians aged 18+ years.
In the latest JWS Research True Issues survey, when asked to name up to three issues that personally interest or concern them the most and that the Australian Government should focus on, more than a third of Australians describe issues related to hospitals, healthcare and ageing.
Following the recent UN climate change conference, COP26, the environment and climate change has overtaken the economy and finances and employment and wages to become the second most important issue to Australians.
While always a key concern, calls for action on living costs have been gradually building over the past 12 months. In contrast, concern about health has fallen back from its winter peak to previous levels. (Noting that this survey was conducted prior to widespread media coverage and local detection of the Omicron variant).
With current COVID-19 outbreaks seemingly under control, cost of living has slightly surpassed hospitals, healthcare and ageing as Australians’ top prompted priority for Government attention.
As it prepares for its next re-election campaign, Federal Government performance ratings have fallen overall, and across all key areas except immigration and border security.
The Federal Government’s overall performance remains above pre-COVID-19 levels but has fallen since July (index of 50, down from 52). This continues a steady decline from its series high result in July 2020 (index of 63) to the poorer sentiment recorded prior to the pandemic (index scores below 50).
Notably, the largest performance declines have occurred in some of the Morrison Government’s traditionally stronger areas, such as business and industry (index of 52, down five points) and mining and resources (index of 52, down four points).
This was an excerpt from our latest True Issues report, to read the full report, click the link below.
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