Australian Social Attitudes IV PUBLIC AND SOCIAL POLICY SERIES Marian Baird and Gaby Ramia, Series Editors The Public and Social Policy series publishes books that pose challenging questions about policy from national, comparative and international perspectives. The series explores policy design, implementation and evaluation; the politics of policy making; and analyses of particular areas of public and social policy. Australian social attitudes IV: the age of insecurity Ed. Shaun Wilson and Markus Hadler Globalisation, the state and regional Australia Amanda Walsh Markets, rights and power in Australian social policy Ed. Gabrielle Meagher and Susan Goodwin Risking together: how finance is dominating everyday life in Australia Dick Bryan and Mike Rafferty Wind turbine syndrome: a communicated disease Simon Chapman and Fiona Crichton Australian Social Attitudes IV The Age of Insecurity Edited by Shaun Wilson and Markus Hadler First published in 2018 by Sydney University Press © Individual contributors 2018 © Sydney University Press 2018 Reproduction and communication for other purposes Except as permitted under the Act, no part of this edition may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or communicated in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All requests for reproduction or communication should be made to Sydney University Press at the address below: Sydney University Press Fisher Library F03 The University of Sydney NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA [email protected] sydney.edu.au/sup A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia. ISBN 9781743325742 paperback ISBN 9781743325759 epub ISBN 9781743325766 PDF Cover image: MrVELL/Shutterstock.com Cover design by Miguel Yamin Contents List of figures ix List of tables xi Introduction: Australia in an age of insecurity 1 Shaun Wilson and Markus Hadler Part 1 Australian insecurities 1 Trust and insecurity: is economic and political insecurity eroding trust? 13 Clive Bean 2 Minor and populist parties in Australia: does economic insecurity or a ‘representation gap’ 27 drive support? Shaun Ratcliff 3 Attitudes to immigration and asylum seekers in Australia: contested territory or an 55 opportunity for right-wing populism? Shaun Wilson Part 2 Politics and political participation 4 Climate scepticism in Australia and in international perspective 81 Bruce Tranter 5 Gender, voting, and women’s representation in the 2016 Australian election 99 Katrine Beauregard 6 Battlers and aspirationals: the Liberal Party and the median voter 117 Ian McAllister and Toni Makkai 7 No steps further! Australian attitudes to ‘the right of free assembly’ in comparative 133 perspective Markus Hadler and Anja Eder 8 The collapse of polling as a way of asking about policy preferences: campaign polls in 149 Australia and Britain Murray Goot vii Australian Social Attitudes IV Part 3 Changing social institutions 9 Howard’s queens in Whitlam’s republic: explaining enduring support for the monarchy in 171 Australia Luke Mansillo 10 Marriage and happiness: changing Australian attitudes to marriage 197 Ann Evans and Edith Gray About the contributors 209 Index 213 viii List of figures Figure 1.1 Trust in government in Australia, 1993–2013. 15 Figure 2.1 Vote share of minor parties and independents in the Australian Senate, 1949–2016. 29 Figure 2.2 Economic security by demographic group. 35 Figure 2.3 Economic insecurity by urban geography and state. 35 Figure 2.4 Economic security by Senate vote. 36 Figure 2.5 How survey items load onto economic and social issue dimensions. 38 Figure 2.6 Distribution of issue preferences of voters with high and low economic security. 40 Figure 2.7 Issues representation by demographic group. 41 Figure 2.8 Support for the Greens (and minor left parties) by issue representation and economic secur i t y . 42 Figure 2.9 Support for the Nick Xenophon Team (and ‘Other’ parties and candidates) by issue representation and economic security. 43 Figure 2.10 Support for libertarian and Christian right parties by issue representation and economic security. 44 Figure 2.11 Support for the populist right by issue representation and economic security. 45 Figure 3.1 Opinions about lower immigration and turning back asylum boats start to converge, 2001–2016. 55 Figure 4.1 Respondents who believe that climate change is ‘not very dangerous’, or ‘not dangerous at all’ for the environment. 85 Figure 4.2 Australian views about the causes of climate change. 89 Figure 4.3 Australian attitudes about the degree of scientific consensus about climate change. 81 Figure 5.1 Gender gap in vote choice, 1967–2016. 101 Figure 6.1 Mentions of ‘aspirations voters’ in Australia and Britain, 1992–2016. 120 Figure 6.2 Attitudes towards unions and taxation, 1993–2016. 124 ix Australian Social Attitudes IV Figure 6.3 Types of voters, 1993–2016. 125 Figure 6.4 Coalition voting among battlers and aspirationals, 1993–2016. 129 Figure 7.1 Explanatory approaches to social and political tolerance. 135 Figure 9.1 Attitudes on retaining the monarchy, 1993-2016. 172 Figure 9.2 Attitudes about retaining the monarchy by age group. 173 Figure 9.3 Attitudes about retaining the monarchy by gender group. 177 Figure 9.4 Attitudes towards retaining the monarchy by class identification. 178 Figure 9.5 Attitudes towards retaining the monarchy by education levels. 179 Figure 9.6 Attitudes towards retaining the monarchy by partisanship. 180 Figure 9.7 Attitudes towards retaining the monarchy by political interest. 182 Figure 9.8 Attitudes towards retaining the monarchy grouped by the Postmaterialism Index. 183 Figure 9.9 Support for retaining the monarchy by birth year and family income. 187 Figure 9.A1 Political attitudes by generation. 171 Figure 9.A2 Birth year mean-centred effects on attitudes towards retaining the monarchy grouped by each study. 171 Figure 9.A3 Family income mean-centred effects on attitudes towards retaining the monarchy grouped by each study. 196 x List of tables Table 1.1: Political trust in Australia, 1993–2016, %. 15 Table 1.2: Political trust within socio-demographic groups, 2013, %. 17 Table 1.3: Perceptions of insecurity, 2013, %. 19 Table 1.4: Political trust by economic insecurity, 2013, %. 21 Table 1.5: Political trust by military insecurity, 2013, %. 21 Table 1.6: Political trust by cultural insecurity, 2013, %. 22 Table 1.7: Effects on political trust (multiple regression). 23 Table 2.1: Voter economic insecurity (sociotropic and personal). 34 Table 3.1: Major populist right party vote (main house of parliament) and attitudes to immigration in selected rich democracies. 58 Table 3.2: Attitudes and demographics of populist right voters versus all other voters, %. 61 Table 3.3: Drivers of anti-immigration sentiments, 1996–2016. 63 Table 3.4: Patterns of opposition to immigration levels (1996 v 2016) and boat arrivals (2001 v 2016), %. 64 Table 3.5: House of Representatives vote in 2016 among self-identified working-class voters by attitudes to boat turnbacks and redistribution. 67 Table 3.6: Agree that the government is too hard (soft) on asylum seekers, %. 68 Table 3.7: Ordinal regression models on immigration levels and asylum turnbacks. 70 Table 3.8: Voter immigration concerns: boat arrivals versus foreign workers, %. 72 Table 3.9: Attitudes to multiculturalism and Muslim immigration, %. 72 Table 3.A1: Questions in Australian Election Studies series. 77 Table 4.1: Climate change sceptics in international perspective (odds ratios). 87 Table 4.2: Self-assessed knowledge of climate change. 91 xi Australian Social Attitudes IV Table 4.3: What predicts climate scepticism among Australians? (odds ratios). 93 Table 5.1: Gender gap in the Labor vote across socio-demographic and individual characteristic groups, %. 104 Table 5.2: Most important issues during the 2016 election campaign by vote choice and gender, %. 106 Table 5.3: Gender differences in political attitudes toward government intervention and equality, %. 109 Table 5.4: Women’s representation in federal parliament by party, %. 99 Table 5.5: Gender differences in support for increasing the number of women MPs, %. 111 Table 5.6: Gender and voting for the Labor Party in 2016. 114 Table 6.1: Socioeconomic characteristics of types of voters, 1996 and 2016. 126 Table 7.1: Acceptance of the freedom of assembly across countries and over time (higher score=more accepting). 140 Table 7.2: Correlation between the average national acceptance of freedom of assembly for extremist groups in 2014 and country characteristics. 141 Table 7.3: Structural and cultural characteristics of Australia compared to 33 countries. 142 Table 7.4: Effects of individual characteristics on the acceptance of the freedon of assembly (Australia only, Generalized Linear Model, Maximum Likelihood estimation). 143 Table 8.1: Number of polls conducted and published in Australia between the dissolution of the Parliament (9 May) and the day of the election (2 July 2016), column % in brackets. 152 Table 8.2: Number of questions in the published Australian polls from the dissolution of the Parliament (9 May) to the day of the election (2 July 2016), % in brackets. 0 Table 8.3: Number of questions in the published British polls from the dissolution of the Parliament (30 March) to the day of the election (7 May 2015), % in brackets. 0 Table 9.A1: Survey item coding for regression models. 191 Table 9.A2: Regression coefficients (support for retaining the monarchy). 193 Table 10.1: Selected marriage statistics, 1980–2010, 2015. 198 Table 10.2: Married people are generally happier than unmarried people, %. 200 Table 10.3: Percentage agreeing that married people are generally happier than unmarried people, by selected characteristics for each year, %. 201 Table 10.4: People who want children ought to get married, %. 203 Table 10.5: Percentage agreeing that people who want children ought to get married, by selected characteristics for each year, %. 205 Table 10.6: Percentage who agree that marriage is an outdated institution, by selected characteristics, %.