Climate change, cost of living and the economy are the most important issues to Australians this election, but there's a large split along voting lines, according to Vote Compass.
More Australians mentioned climate change as their number one issue than any other topic, with 29 per cent of people saying it was important.
But that was a view held by only 8 per cent of Coalition voters, compared to 30 per cent of Labor voters and 50 per cent of people who vote Green.
For Liberal-National Party voters, climate change ranked well behind economy and finance, which was listed as the most important issue by 34 per cent of people, followed by cost of living (13 per cent), then defence and public security (12 per cent).
Among Labor voters, climate change was followed by government accountability (17 per cent), cost of living (14 per cent) and health care (10 per cent).
Greens voters were most worried about climate change, then the environment (14 per cent), cost of living (10 per cent) and government accountability (7 per cent).
Only 7 per cent of Labor voters and 4 per cent of Greens voters said the economy was the most important issue to them at the ballot box.
La Trobe University Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy associate professor Andrea Carson said the Vote Compass data showed there was a disconnect between the election campaign so far and what voters wanted to hear.
"Clearly, we're seeing they want to hear about climate change — not all sections of the population, but a large proportion of the population — and yet the major parties so far have been conspicuously absent in talking about climate change," Dr Carson said.
Climate change was considered the most important topic across all age groups but was more commonly listed among 18 to 29-year-olds, 38 per cent of whom said it was their most important topic.
And it has also shot ahead as a topic of concern in recent years, jumping from 5 per cent of Australians saying it was their most important issue in 2016 to 27 per cent in 2019 and 29 per cent in 2022.
Dr Carson said this made sense given Australians' lived experiences of droughts and floods.
"I would think we should be seeing the campaign messaging start to switch onto this, but of course climate change has been a really difficult policy area for both of the major parties," she said.
"Both of them have had political casualties as a consequence of this policy area and have lost leaders over it, from Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull on the Coalition side, then Julia Gillard was branded with that 'broken promise' on no carbon tax.
"It has been political poison for both sides of politics, which might be why they're reluctant to talk about it, but the thing is the voters want to hear about it and we're seeing that clearly in the survey data."
Australians increasingly worried about cost of living
Vote Compass data also shows cost of living is more important to voters in 2022 than in the past two elections.
Only 3 per cent of voters said it was most important to them in 2016, and 4 per cent in 2019, but it is now ranked as the most important issue by 13 per cent of Australians.
ABC election analyst Antony Green said cost of living was being addressed in different ways by the major parties.
"The government says you control cost of living by handling the economy well, and that's why economy shows up so strongly amongst Coalition supporters, whereas Labor's talking about wages and cost of living in that way from a different direction," Green said.
COVID-19 less of an issue at the election
COVID-19 barely rated a mention among Australians: overall, only 1 per cent of voters said it was the most important issue to them.
Green said it was a "surprising finding".
"What's happened with COVID is it was a big issue at the end of last year and early this year with that Omicron wave as everything was opening up," he said.
"But, as things have opened up and people have got used to COVID being in the community, it's sort of disappeared as an issue for many voters — then, we've gone back to the traditional fare of Australian politics: cost of living, running economy, defence and climate change."
About the data
- Vote Compass responses have been weighted by gender, age, education, language, religion, place of residence and past vote to match the Australian population, creating a nationally representative sample.
- The sample size for this report is 97,159 respondents.
- Find about more about the methodology in this explainer.
