Your Say SA: Five minute guide to what South Australians think

THE Sunday Mail’s Your Say SA is the state’s most comprehensive tracker of South Australian thoughts and sentiment across all the important issues — so, what are the things that are pertinent to you? Find out in our five minute guide.

• FULL RESULTS: See all the findings from Your Say SA 2018
• YOUR SAY SA: We’re riding a wave of optimism
• YOUR SAY SA: Public wants power price probe
• YOUR SAY SA: Canberra chaos boosts both SA leaders

THE Sunday Mail’s Your Say SA is the state’s most comprehensive tracker of South Australian thoughts and sentiment across all the important issues.

So what are the things that are pertinent to you? Find out in our five minute guide.

Power

■Power remains the biggest issue facing SA but the percentage of people who rate it as an issue has dropped marginally.

■We want a royal commission into the energy sector and we care much more about affordable power prices than reducing carbon.

■More people want wind farms than we did last year and more of us say we should invest in more solar farms.

■Half of us still think coal should play a key role in power generation.

■More than half of us have plans to install battery storage in our homes and nearly half also have plans to install solar panels.

Optimism

■The percentage of people either “somewhat optimistic” or “very optimistic” about SA’s future has risen from 40.4 per cent to 61.3 per cent.

■More people than last year believe their kids will enjoy a better standard of living.

■There has been a big rise in the number of people who rate SA as a good or excellent place to raise a young family.

■Many more of us say SA is an average, good or excellent place to run a business.

Business

■People recognise that defence is the most important industry for SA in the next 20 years.

■Nearly two-thirds of us still want shopping hours deregulated.

Infrastructure

■Support is growing for another major infrastructure project in SA but more than half of us don’t want another sports stadium.

Property

■More people than last year reckon their kids will be able to afford to buy a home but it’s still 70/30 against.

■Three-quarters say foreigners should not be able to buy residential real estate in SA.

Utilities

■In the wake of the royal commission into financial services, we don’t trust the Big Four banks and most are either thinking about or have already moved their business to a different provider.

■Nearly half of us have changed service providers (power, internet, phone, bank or gas) in the past year to get a better deal.

■Nearly half are yet to be connected to the NBN. Fewer than 40 per cent respondents are reporting their internet connection has “significantly improved”.

State Politics

■We are much happier with Steven Marshall’s performance as Premier than we were with Jay Weatherill last year.

■Paradoxically, we are happier with Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas than we were with Mr Marshall when he was in the same position last year.

Local Government

■Only 60 per cent of us say we will vote in council elections, despite the fact that history shows that only a third of us will probably do so. Nearly two-thirds of us say that voting in council elections should not be compulsory.

■Nearly two-thirds of us are in favour of municipal mergers to create super councils and 40 per cent say we should get rid of local government altogether (20 per cent say we should get rid of state governments).

■Of the three levels of government in Australia, we trust local government the least.

■Three-quarters of us agree with the Liberal policy of rate-capping.

Federal politics

■Unsurprisingly, we want it to be made harder to depose a sitting prime minister without a general election and nearly all of us are not confident that whoever is elected PM at next election will survive the full term.

■We want four-year fixed terms in federal Parliament.

Law and order

■We see the ice epidemic as the biggest law-enforcement priority facing the state and more than 90 per cent say the authorities are not doing enough to solve the problem.

■Nearly two-thirds of us want marijuana decriminalised for personal use.

■A whopping 97 per cent say judges should have the power to order children on drugs into mandatory assessment and rehab treatment.

■We think court sentences are too lenient, judges are out of touch with community values and mostly agree with the State Government’s compensation payout to Henry Keogh, who was wrongly convicted of murder.

■More than half say some female prisoners should be allowed to keep their babies with them in jail.

■We are generally happy with a 3am lockout at licensed venues but four in 10 also would be happy if that time was moved back to 1am.

Transport

■We want more money spent on country roads, we don’t want toll roads and we want speed limits on country roads to stay at 110km/h.

■Congestion on Adelaide roads has worsened in the past 12 months and we want more planning to ensure smooth traffic flow in peak hour.

■We overwhelmingly want 25km/h and 40km/h roadworks signs removed when workers are not there and believe speed cameras are mainly used as a revenue-raiser.

■A majority say Adelaide’s next tram should go to Adelaide Airport but we are using public transport even less than last year.

Health

■We don’t think the Royal Adelaide Hospital is handling SA’s health demands.

■We want the smoking age increased to 21 and we don’t want vaping to be made legal.

■We want unvaccinated kids banned from preschools and childcare and want welfare payments withheld from parents who don’t vaccinate their children.

Education/Childcare

■We don’t believe our education system is effective, we don’t want Year 12 exams scrapped and we don’t believe teachers are sufficiently skilled.

■We continue to think Year 7s should be in high school and we support a merger of Adelaide Uni and UniSA.

■Nearly half think school uniform policies should be gender-neutral and more than half say students should have the choice to wear unisex uniforms.

■We want small class sizes to be a priority, at all levels, and a third of people who had kids at school say students are crammed in like sardines.