IT'S titled Australia's Biggest Climate Poll, and the survey of 15,000 voters across all 151 federal electorates by the Australian Conservation Foundation is a comprehensive and detailed survey of the national mood on climate change.
Although the survey report and its accompanying media release concentrate on five broad questions, the spreadsheets prepared by pollsters YouGov show voters were asked 13 questions - some of them with multiple parts - to gain 24 opinions overall.
The headline for the foundation is that a majority of voters in every electorate believe the Morrison government should be doing more to tackle climate change.
The foundation says the results show voters in every electorate - including "coal" electorates in the NSW and Queensland coal fields - favour renewables over new coal or gas power plants.
On these findings, the foundation says the poll "shatters the myth that there's one view in the bush about climate change and another in the city".
There is no doubt that support for renewable energy has grown in regional Australia, as it has in the capitals.
But the implied equation of "good" renewables versus "bad" thermal power stations is something of a false equivalence when it comes to assessing views "in the bush".
The argument has never been about whether people in coal electorates supported renewables.
It's been about the impact on those communities, and the speed with which the inevitable transition will occur.
The foundation says the poll shows Australians are "demanding action from their elected representatives". And some undoubtedly are, but the first result highlighted - the importance of climate change to voters - can be read two ways.
The foundation says "across Australia, one in four voters (28 per cent) say climate change is the most important issue to determine their vote at the next election".
RELATED READING:
- Land and Environment Court makes another climate change ruling
- OPINION: Climate change the new religion?
- Conroy says Fitzgibbon's climate position would mean 'permanent opposition'
In NSW, that percentage ranges from 38 per cent in the Sydney Harbour electorate of Wentworth, to 21 per cent in Hunter and New England.
But it also means, that for 72 per cent, or almost three out of four voters, climate change is not the most important issue.
They may want their governments to do more, but understand that technology, as much as political will, is the limiting factor.
Still for the 22 per cent of Liberal voters who rate climate change first, the Morrison government has something to think about.
ISSUE: 39,657
