Hot Air
Prime Minister Julia Gillard is in a bit of trouble when it comes to honesty and climate change, according to a small but robust sample of the Australian population.
The research shows Gillard is not really believable when it comes to climate change – in fact Opposition leader Tony Abbott is six times more likely to be perceived as honest.
One of the few small joys in working in a research business is that you occasionally get to do a piece of work which allows you to see what Australians are thinking about all sorts of things.
Don’t get me wrong, at CoreData we love spending our time thinking about and researching the way in which Australians think about money and their experiences with it, but this week, in reaction to the Carbon Tax Ads starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Caton, we found out what they think about the vexing issue of carbon pollution and the Gillard Government’s proposal for dealing with it.
In what is a piece of good news for the Government, 82% of Australians accept global warming as fact and another 44% think that we should be doing something about it, despite acknowledging that Australia produces just 1.35% of the world’s carbon emissions and even if we wipe out carbon pollution altogether here it would be a mathematical irrelevance.
What’s bad news for the Government is less than 10% of Australians actually trust them to administer the scheme. This is according to the 315 people surveyed and demonstrates a pretty bi-partisan lack of trust – even Labor voters think that the Government will stuff it up.
Who is Australia’s Most Believable Spokesperson On Climate Change?
n=315, respondents who believe in climate change
In fact the whole idea of a tax splits the electorate; just over a third of Australians think that tax is a good idea – another third think it’s a bad idea and a similar amount don’t know.
But let’s talk about Carbon Cate for a moment. While 30% of Australians think that overwhelmingly she should be free to express her opinions and another 12% think it’s fantastic because it’s putting carbon on the agenda, another third think it’s deeply irritating to be preached to by a movie star.
As far as the Government goes, only 15% of the electorate think the Government has handled the carbon tax issue well, while the remainder think the Government has done a poor or very poor job. As far as other solutions go, the most popular option is for nuclear energy with support from 21% of the population.
This in other terms is pretty poor news for the Government – 70% of the population thinks that prices will go up and there will be no obvious benefit to consumers and that this in the end will have been a load of hot air.
One Comment on “Hot Air”
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Ern Horgan says:
Both Gillard and Abbott are liars or at least have changed their positions. She said “No tax” and now wants one. He said “why not a tax?” and now says “No”