Environment is prime worry for the first time: poll

The environment has for the first time surpassed healthcare, cost of living and the economy to be the number one concern for Australians.

The Ipsos Issues Monitor, which asks a representative sample of Australians to select the three top issues facing the nation, found 32.1 per cent rated the state of the environment among their biggest worries in November - the highest share in the decade-long history of the survey.

Amid bushfires and drought, a poll shows the environment has emerged as our top concern.Credit: Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

The result follows devastating spring bushfires in NSW and Queensland and worsening drought conditions in many regional areas. These events have been widely attributed to climate change caused by global warming.

The survey shows anxiety about the state of the environment has risen steadily since the middle of the decade.

The share of the population rating the environment among their biggest concerns was in single digits for much of 2014 and 2015, but in the two years since November 2017, that proportion has jumped from 14 per cent to above 32 per cent.

Ipsos social researcher Daniel Evans attributed the environment’s No. 1 ranking to two factors -  widespread publicity of climate change agitation and protest, including by prominent members of the business community, and events in October and November linked to climate change, especially bushfires.

“There’s been both activism ... and there’s actual events attributed to climate change,” he said.

The cost of living ranked a close second to the environment in the November Issues Monitor survey followed by healthcare.

There has also been a marked lift in concern about the economy.

Mr Evans said it was unusual for worries about the economy and the environment to rise at the same time.

“Typically when economic concerns have increased, environmental concerns have decreased, but what we’ve noticed this year is that as environmental concerns have gone up, concerns about the economy has gone up as well,” he said. “Those two are no longer on different paths.”

The rise in concern about the economy coincides with relatively weak growth in gross domestic product (GDP) during the past year and a prolonged period of low growth in real wages.

In the past, anxiety about the environment has been most pronounced among those aged under 25 years but there has been a marked rise in the share of older people rating the environment among their biggest worries.

“The environment has always ranked among the five top concerns for younger Australians,” said Mr Evans.

“But over the past year, the momentum of concern about the environment has been driven by older Australians.”

Other issues to rank among the top 10 in November were crime (24 per cent), housing (20 per cent), poverty (17 per cent), immigration (17 per cent), unemployment (17 per cent) and drug abuse (13 per cent).

During the past decade, healthcare has been Australia’s biggest worry (52/109 monthly surveys), followed by The Economy (28 months) and Cost of Living (27 months).

The only other issues to top the survey have been crime (1 month) and now the environment (1 month).