Abstract
Australia is a relative laggard on climate policy, amidst social and political fractures despite rising support for climate policy in opinion polls. In the 2019 Australian federal election, which was dubbed the ‘climate election’, the opposition campaigned on comparatively ambitious climate action but the government was returned on a status quo policy. We explore the social-political determinants of climate attitudes and how they are positioned in relation to voting behaviour, in the context of the 2019 election. We use a large nationally representative survey of Australian voters (n = 2,033), and employ univariate and multivariate ordinal logistic regression models to uncover correlates. We find that a large majority of voters think it is important for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the importance given to emissions reductions is sharply divided along lines of political party preference. Holding pro-climate action attitudes consistently correlates with voting for progressive political parties and having higher levels of education. We also find a strong age cohort divide, with younger people holding stronger pro-climate attitudes than older people, raising the question whether we are seeing the emergence of a new generation expressing strong pro-climate action and progressive political attitudes that will persist over time. We conduct population ageing scenarios to project changes to public opinion, by age group, into the future. These indicate that strong support for climate action would increase by about four percentage points over the coming decade as younger voters replace the old, if attitudes within cohorts remained fixed. We conclude that while cleavages in climate attitudes in Australia are set to continue, efforts to promote climate delay are bound to have a limited shelf life as a growing majority of voters accepts the need for climate action.
Highlights
Australia, politically and socially, has been failing to achieve, or even seek, a consensus approach to climate policy for over a decade
We find that a large majority of voters think it is important for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Our analysis of climate change opinion data in the context of the May 2019 Australian federal election shows a large majority of voters feel that it is important for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Summary
Politically and socially, has been failing to achieve, or even seek, a consensus approach to climate policy for over a decade. Climate change has been a prominent and contentious political issue, was central to several election campaigns, and implicated in the overturn of multiple Prime Ministers [1,2,3]. These political fractures are reflected in Australian public opinion, with social divides on climate change following demographic and political cleavages [4]. Research from the mid-2010s positions Australia as second only to the United States in terms of how divided along left-right political lines are attitudes toward climate. Australian voters’ attitudes to climate action and their social-political determinants change [5]. The social-political divide has been fuelled by personalities prominent in politics and the media [6] and well-funded campaigns by the fossil fuel industry [7, 8]
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