Joe S. Blogs

Climate vote retreats to a simmer

An attempt to wrangle the electorate’s appetite for climate action​

31 Mar 2025

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​The federal election of 2022 shall be preserved in the annals as something of a climate election, yet polling ahead of the upcoming vote suggests climate action is struggling to hold its ground. According to a rolling poll commissioned by research group Roy Morgan, ‘climate change’ is down by 9 percentage points as an issue of concern among Australian voters. While it hasn’t fallen away entirely, ‘climate’ now shares 3rd place – which it also held in 2022 – with ‘reducing crime and maintaining law and order’.

 

It's worth bearing in mind the circumstances that may have served to amplify the climate vote three years ago. Social researcher Rebecca Huntley believes the combination of an appalling natural disaster and a reticent government were the best explainers. In addition to her research work, Huntley is the author of such titles as How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way that Makes a Difference.

 

“That was really the effect of the Black Summer fires,” Huntley says of the 2022 election result. “And it was all about the sense that the Prime Minister hadn’t taken big crises and disasters seriously.”

 

“But since then the cost of living crisis has been so acute.”

 

“Every electoral issue – health, education, immigration, jobs – every single one is being wiped off the map by cost of living.”

 

Between 2022-24, ‘cost of living’ spiked at least 7 percentage points in the aforementioned Roy Morgan poll. At present, it looks to be comfortably the pre-eminent issue on voters’ minds, although it was also the clear clubhouse leader in 2022 (resonating with 50% of poll respondents, as compared to 32% in the case of climate). ‘Managing immigration and population’ and ‘law and order’ have also seen a rise in the last three years, providing some nuance to claims there’s only been one improver.

 

Whilst the poll only gives tentative analysis of specific electorates, areas of Melbourne are likely among the regions where climate prioritisation has experienced the sharpest drop. Among these is the current ALP seat of McEwen, which comprises Melbourne’s northern fringe and extends into central Victoria. Successive quarters of modest data (taken from several hundred respondents) suggest a drop in climate prioritisation near 16 percentage points, significantly outstripping the national average. 

 

Outside of Coles in Diamond Creek, the suburb at McEwen’s southern tip, 25-year-old Jessica reflects that climate has somewhat been sidelined from her own perspective.

 

Her current main concern is, “probably housing. The economy is terrible. But also maybe helping out with the war in Ukraine.”

 

Of the environment, in the face of climate change, she says, “It’s no-one’s priority at the moment, which is terrible.”

 

“That was probably last election. I’m still just as concerned about it, but I think housing and the economy is now starting to get so bad that it needs immediate action.”

 

From a nearby bench, 73-year-old Vivien immediately declares she’s most concerned by “how Australia responds to Donald Trump”. She reports that climate action is “absolutely huge…front of mind for me”, but only gets to this opinion after being asked for it specifically – other issues were volunteered first.

 

John Dumaresq is the mayor of Nilumbik Shire – which accommodates Diamond Creek – and says a notable shift away from climate in McEwen would partly come as a surprise.

 

Although census data suggests McEwen’s proportion of mortgage holders exceeds the national average by 17%, Dumaresq reports, “there’s no significant unique exposure to cost of living pressures”.

 

In line with Huntley’s theory, he speculates declining focus on climate in McEwen would largely reflect the special interest generated in 2022 by the Black Summer fires. Communities in McEwen were themselves severely affected by the Black Saturday fires of 2009.

 

“Of significant concern to our community is the potential for harsher fire weather and longer fire seasons,” Dumaresq says.

 

It raises the question of whether, in Australia, the climate vote is somewhat tethered to the recency of natural disasters. Might Cyclone Alfred of March – a weather system that wandered well outside of its ‘usual’ bounds and impacted several million people – come to play a role in a federal vote set to be counted in May? To speak cynically, could Alfred offer, for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a similar electoral bounce to the one Superstorm Sandy is popularly thought to have provided Barack Obama in the 2012 US presidential race?

 

Huntley says, “I think it is a bit too soon to figure out whether the cyclone is having an effect on the election beyond moving the date.”

 

In media appearances in the wake of Alfred, Albanese hasn’t thrown his full weight behind the climate conversation, apart from a matter-of-fact declaration the continued impacts of climate change will throw up “more frequent…more intense” extreme weather events.

 

But what’s known about the environmental policies of Labor and the Liberal Party is enough to suggest the differences are stark – perhaps as stark as any ahead of the 2022 election. This time around, the Coalition party room displays more coherence towards the seriousness of climate change. However, if a Dutton government were to turn the nation’s electricity sector towards nuclear power as pledged, Labor’s ambitions to make the grid 82% renewables by 2030 would be stifled in turn.

 

The Climate Change Authority has suggested the nuclear route would be associated with an additional 1 billion tonnes of cumulative emissions when compared to the current course. Surveys conducted by The Sunrise Project, a climate communication network, suggest the Liberals’ nuclear policy is most likely to resonate with the minority of Australians who are ‘doubtful’ or ‘dismissive’ towards climate change. It found only 19% of Australians ‘alarmed’ by climate are supportive of a nuclear push. Reservations about the electoral appeal of nuclear likely explain reports the Liberal Party has reduced their promotion of the policy in recent months.

 

All the same, Huntley believes a national decline in climate prioritisation is largely independent of the actions and posturing of major parties in the expiring parliament. Attention towards Scott Morrison’s climate credentials in 2022 may have been exceptional.

 

Huntley says, “We have to be careful that just because climate isn’t there (as a dominant issue) doesn’t mean there’s a kind of de facto endorsement of what the government is doing or a de facto endorsement of the nuclear conversation. It’s just that cost of living is so overwhelming.”

 

Huntley expects energy policy – and its attendant effects on household bills – to play a greater role in this election than climate action per se. She believes an overlooked policy area that may rouse the electorate would be measures to support the rollout of batteries in homes and small businesses.

 

The electorates that tentatively show the largest declines for ‘climate change’ in the Roy Morgan poll currently belong to both sides of the aisle in Canberra. Among them are safe Labor seats in Fremantle and western Sydney, the Nationals’ Herbert in Townsville, the Liberals’ Berowra in Sydney’s outer north, and independent Kate Chaney’s Curtin in Perth. There’s even Melbourne, the comfortable bastion of Greens leader Adam Bandt. Such variety suggests re-prioritisation trends don’t foretell the wipeout of climate-concerned MPs, only a redoubled focus on cost of living.

 

Over the course of the last parliament, for example, the Greens have wound themselves more tightly to concerns about housing, which to a degree must logically have reduced their emphasis on climate. If the Greens are to win back Macnamara, the bayside seat currently represented by the ALP’s Josh Burns, making a superior impression on housing is likely to be the decisive factor. Macnamara comprises broad tracts of Port Phillip and Glen Eira councils, and the Roy Morgan poll suggests it has seen a similar pivot away from climate as was reported for McEwen – a decline around 17%.

 

At the electorate’s iconic South Melbourne Market, 39-year-old renter Curtis reflects, “I’ve kind of given up on the possibility of ever owning a home.”

 

“I do really think that if people want any kind of reasonable change in the way that society functions and the way that our country’s going, they should vote for minor parties.”

 

He says that climate “is a long term thing. There are more immediate concerns for me now.”

 

The less touristic plaza across the road is the preserve of 87-year-old John, a strident climate advocate who says there are more obvious actions the government can take to address climate change than there are in the case of inflation and financial pain.

 

“Cost of living is certainly an issue, but I can’t see what the government can do to really make an impression on that problem.”

 

“We can certainly do more about climate change unilaterally because we have the wealth of resources and materials to enable us to have a big impact.”

 

Sally Faraday, a local volunteer with the Macnamara branch of the Australian Conservation Foundation, reports her group has maintained a positive relationship with MP Burns, who evidently needs to keep constituent groups onside to protect a slender margin.

 

Faraday agrees all manner of housing-related anxieties – from renters to those owning valuable local properties – shall dictate the winner of the upcoming contest. She says the local ACF have seen strong engagement with their own public events in recent years, including forums focused on the ill-fated ‘Nature Positive’ bill and a popular stall at the recent St Kilda Festival.

 

“There’s a definite appetite for it still, I feel,” says Faraday. “But is that preaching to the converted? I can’t really tell.”

 

It is difficult, of course, for an advocate to properly regard electoral appetite once their own perspective becomes so ‘involved’. Faraday says, “That’s something we (fellow advocates) all struggle with. We all talk about the fact that it’s very hard not to beat people over the head with this stuff.”

 

“If you read around a lot, you find that industry is trying to find solutions, but it does need that government support.”

 

“There’s no way to do it without having a lot of people concerned about it.”

 

For metropolitan Melburnians, greater concern might be stoked by predictions of severe climate impacts in local areas. Last year’s Port Phillip Bay Coastal Hazard Assessment, released by the Victorian government, considered the susceptibility of the bay’s surrounds to flooding if sea levels are to rise by 1.1 metres – the upper estimate of the IPCC’s forecast for the year 2100. The report suggested that, by this date, one-quarter of the Port Phillip council area could be subject to storm tide inundation during what are presently ‘one-in-100 year’ storm events. Whilst not exactly ‘apocalyptic’, such official predictions validate or head towards the worst of people’s climate change imaginings.

 

Advocate Faraday says she doesn’t believe the ‘existential risk’ picture of climate change is overreach. She argues a range of severe climate impacts across the globe escape a mainstream media diet in Australia.

 

“We see weird weather in Australia – and Australia is a bellwether for overall climate change – but places like Africa that we don’t hear about are in deep famine,” Faraday says. “It’s just what we don’t hear. There’s a lot of media that doesn’t cover that stuff and there’s a lot that people don’t know.”

 

At the unholy table of possible ‘existential risks’, climate change is seemingly joined by a growing number of companions. In January of this year, the international Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists demonstratively put forward their infamous ‘Doomsday Clock’, declaring humanity sits at ’89 seconds to midnight’. In addition to climate change, their statement justified this advance by citing the threats of nuclear weapons, pandemics, and the misuse of emerging AI technology.

 

In one of Australia’s most climate-concerned councils, a recent art installation recalls the ‘Doomsday Clock’. Yasmin Walton’s ‘Zone Red’ sits on a heritage plinth in Fitzroy’s Edinburgh Gardens, a stark blue frame with solar-powered red digits ticking down towards the year 2030. This date reflects the deadline for Yarra Council’s own goal of net-zero emissions, Walton says, as well as the stage by which the IPCC suggests ‘significant’ progress must be shown in order to halt irreversible climate breakdown.

 

Whilst ‘2050’ might be a more popular target date – it’s the year the ambitions of the Paris Agreement should be realised – Walton feels becoming fixated on this “ignores the urgency of the changes we need to implement now.”

 

“’Zone Red’ is about emphasising the shrinking window we have to act—it’s not a far-off future problem; it’s immediate.”

 

Yarra Council and Fitzroy sit within the Wills electorate, which Roy Morgan expects to have the third highest ‘climate vote’ in the country. When attending Edinburgh Gardens herself on walks with her whippet, Walton overhears a range of reactions to her own work.

 

“Most people have engaged with it thoughtfully, recognising its significance and appreciating the conversation it sparks,” says Walton.

 

“But unfortunately some have reacted with alarm, or even hostility, particularly most recently in media commentary focusing on cost rather than concept. The budget for a sculpture like this needs to include engineering fees, multiple designs, fabrication, technology and installation.”

 

Given the local crowd, reactions of despair or climate anxiety might have been predictable. But prominent critiques of the sculpture’s $18,000 budget could be taken as further evidence of what’s at the heart of the climate challenge in Australia – cost of living pressures demanding to be attended first. 

 

Somewhat ironically, ‘Zone Red’ won’t be allowed to see out its five-year countdown on the current plinth. Due to the scheduling of other public art, it’s set to dismount in April of next year. By then, climate policy in Australia shall either be charting a similar course or wading through the feasibility of a radical new direction. For better or for worse, there won’t be any neutralisation of climate politics, and climate action will remain a significant electoral concern. It’s been this way for almost two decades, reflects Rebecca Huntley. 

 

“To a greater or lesser extent climate and energy has been a factor in one way or another in every federal election we’ve had since 2007,” says Huntley.

 

“It will have to be a constant. Energy policy and action on climate just won’t go away. The changing nature of the economy, energy mix, and the natural environment will force us. We’ll have no choice but to engage with it.”

 

Yet as has previously been the case, ‘climate concern’ in Australia seems left to contend with the added stress of waiting in queue. It’s made all the worse, this year, by an especially quarrelsome customer standing ahead.

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