Australian voters’ attitudes to climate action and their social-political determinants

are highly complex and there is evidence to the contrary, for example indicating political con- servatism (and perhaps therefore anti-climate action attitudes) increases over the life course [63, 64], that factors such as race and identity can be more significant than age in shaping atti- tudes toward contentious social-political issues [65], and that political orientations and iden- tity in youth are fluid compared to mid- and old-age [66, 67]. Our sample is somewhat skewed towards older respondents (see SM Table 2 in S1 File). Given the tendency for younger people to indicate higher levels of support for climate change action, this implies that the results overall indicate somewhat lower levels of support for cli- mate action than a ‘true’ average across the Australian population. However, this should not substantially affect the age-related analyses where we analyse attitudes separately for each age cohort, and extrapolate on the basis of cohort sizes across the population. A bias towards older respondents may exist within each sample cohort, however this is likely a minor effect. Our findings broadly reflect that of recent research which interrogated young Australians’ climate attitudes. Tranter’s [53] analysis of young Australians likewise found that young people tend to hold stronger pro-climate attitudes than older people, though political preference remains the most significant factor. Overall, our data suggest that Australia’s 2019 election was not a ‘cli- mate election’, as was frequently portrayed in the lead up to polling day. This raises important

questions for climate policy advocates about whether framing elections as akin to referenda on climate action is an effective strategy. Our findings indicate that the vast majority of Austra- lians support climate action but do not vote according to climate action as a priority. Only very small proportions of Coalition voters considered climate change important to their vote. When elections are won by the party without ambitious climate policies it may serve as a sym- bolic warrant for governing parties to ignore an otherwise compelling demand for climate action expressed through aggregate public opinion. As the ‘climate election’ framing gains prominence internationally [e.g. 68–72], this will be a significant caution to consider. There are also questions about whether significant events following the 2019 election will prompt further change to aggregate public opinion about climate change in Australia. The public debate about Australia’s 2019–2020 bushfires clearly implicated climate change in the broader bushfire narrative [10], though the 2019 loss of the ‘climate election’ also underpinned counter-narratives [e.g. 73]. This is a notable shift given public debate about Australia’s devas- tating Black Saturday fires in 2009 largely ignored climate change [74]. The influence of experiencing extreme weather on attitudes about climate change carries mixed evidence, gen- erally indicating at most a small impact [44, 75, 76]. However, it is perhaps unprecedented to have not only fires of the ferocity and spatial and temporal extent of Australia’s in the 2019–

2020 summer, but for those to be accompanied by clear scientific statements on climate influ- ence [77] and powerful institutional acknowledgement of the role of climate change [78]. Just as our results have shown that climate change is not a monolithic issue in voters’ politi- cal decisions, any impact of the 2019–2020 bushfires on voters’ attitudes will occur with the broader social context, made eminently more complex due to the impact of COVID-19. Some polling undertaken in 2020 finds, for the first time since 2012, a small decrease in the propor- tion of Australians supporting urgent action on climate change [16]. These findings implicate COVID-19 and the widespread disruption it has caused in the dip to concern about climate change, aligning with other research findings [79]. Conclusion We analysed the determinants of Australian voters’ attitudes toward climate change in the context of the 2019 federal election. We found a large majority of Australians consider emis- sions reduction important, but how important is consistently affected by political party PLOS ONE Australian voters’ attitudes to climate action and their social-political determinants PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248268 March 24, 2021 14 / 18