NEWSFLASH: IPA research shows Australians ARE willing to pay for climate action!

Posted on May 25, 2012 · Posted in Blog

I was thrilled today to read some excellent research conducted by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).  The IPA have released the results of a Galaxy poll they commissioned to gauge Australian’s willingness to pay to fight global warming.   Let’s take a look at the summary of the results:

Amount willing to pay May-10 May-12
Over $1,000 6% 5%
$1,000 9% 9%
$500 22% 16%
$300 14% 14%
$100 12% 12%
Nothing 35% 37%
Don’t know 3% 7%

What can we divine from this table?

  • 14% of people surveyed were prepared to pay $1,000 or more per year.
  • 30% of people surveyed were prepared to pay over $500 per year.
  • 56% of people surveyed were prepared to pay something per year.
  • 37% of people surveyed weren’t prepared to pay anything.
  • 7% of people surveyed are just confused.
14% of Australians voluntarily paying $1,000 per year!?! Wow!  I’ve highlighted the 56% line because that’s exactly what Galaxy say in their report. It might have been even higher if they’d allowed people an option in their survey of paying less than $100. The glaringly obvious conclusion here is that Australians are in-fact willing to pay for action on climate change.
The IPA must have been pleased because they tweeted about it three times with links to the media release, the link to the actual survey results and a link to Alan Moran’s piece on the survey.  At 2:34pm they  tweeted the link to an article in The Australian.
 InstofPublicAffairs ‏@TheIPA “Few willing to pay cost of carbon fight” The @Australian:http://bit.ly/JEODCf ($)
So imagine my surprise to find that the IPA seemed to have missed their own joyous news, and being so used to IPA bad news against climate change, the Australian seemed to use a headline they’d prepared earlier – “Few willing to pay cost of carbon fight”.  Er, hang on, over 56% are willing to pay for the carbon fight.  Perhaps on a technicality they can make that claim based on IPA estimates about the cost of Australian climate policies on a per capita basis,  but that analysis seems to ignore compensation.  They probably missed all this in their haste to meet stringent and important media deadlines.  Fortunately, dear readers, here at Economists at Large, we’ve had the time to read the survey properly and give the good news to you.

The temporal aspects of the research indicate that things are basically unchanged since 2010. The biggest changes are in the $300 and “Don’t know” category.  If I had to offer a hypothesis I’d say this is a middle class shift in response to the negativity and misinformation surrounding the carbon tax, and critically, the compensation paid. But really, we can basically say things are for the most part much the same.

I think this is cause for celebration.  The honeymoon period of K Rudd and Australian leadership on climate change has long since disappeared, yet the majority of Australian’s still support – and are willing to pay for – action on climate change, despite years of rhetoric and negativity surrounding Australian climate change policy. Pat yourselves on the back, Australia.  And you too, IPA, a fine bit of research…just work on the reporting, if not for your own members, do it for the readers of The Australian.