Dear Neville —
The Australia Institute was able to commission exit polling of 1,429 Queensland voters over Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night this week. We conducted this polling to measure the effect of our work internally, and for you, our supporters. But we shared them with the media too, because, well…
The results were staggering!
- 73% said accountability, transparency and trust in government had a large impact on how they voted (15% said it had a small impact, while 13% said it did not affect how they voted).
- Half (51%) of those polled heard or read about Tony Fitzgerald (with whom we developed the ‘Fitzgerald Principles’) during the campaign. Of those, 62% said Mr Fitzgerald’s comments prompted them to give more weight to the need for governments to be open and transparent when they voted.
- That means Tony Fitzgerald and the ‘Fitzgerald Principles’ had an impact on one in three (32%) Queensland voters.
- Almost 9 in 10 (88%) Queensland voters believe that the results from the recent Queensland State election have implications for the Abbott government, and it looks like they were right judging by news of Tuesday’s Liberal leadership spill!
Another issue the Institute raised during the campaign was the $2 billion in subsidies for the Galilee Basin (which had no public cost-benefit analysis). We asked Queensland voters: who should provide future investment in the Galilee Basin?
- Seven in ten (71%) said it should be coal companies (17% supported further taxpayer subsidies, 12% said ‘neither’).
- A whopping nine in ten (89%) think the government should be required to publicly release information justifying public investments over a billion dollars.
There’s a columnist at the Courier Mail who thinks Queensland voters got it wrong. He even singled out the Australia Institute, and our supporters for a special mention today:
We regret to inform you that if waving the Fitzgerald Principles “under Campbell Newman’s nose at the leaders forum” was a stunt, it wasn’t ours (great idea though!). We were pleasantly shocked when we heard that a member of the public had asked the Leaders about the Principles in the Debate and even more pleasantly surprised when Newman agreed!
The Fitzgerald Principles now form part of Labor’s commitment to independent Peter Wellington to secure government – no small feat. And another Courier Mail columnist had a very different take.
The Australia Institute is an independent think tank, funded by commissioned projects and donations from philanthropic trusts and individuals like you. This polling shows that the Australia Institute’s supporters have had a measurable impact on the Queensland election. The issue of accountability went from being barely mentioned to a key factor in how people voted in Queensland. |
