Study reveals bleak thoughts of unhappy citizens with little belief in Government as Australian election looms

Most Australians are stressed, depressed, fear the future and don’t believe any government can fix their problems, a new study has revealed.

More than 50 per cent believe life will be worse in 50 years, with more than a third still reporting financial stress despite more jobs, an multiple cost-of-living relief measures.

The results of a new election monitoring survey by the Australian National University on Monday will be unsettling news for the nation’s politicians on the eve of the Federal election and come at a time when Labor says the worst of the inflation challenge is behind us.

While the Government has rolled out pledges on Medicare, tax relief and cheaper childcare and the Coalition has promised to boost productivity, a pall of gloom appears to have settled on the public’s expectations for future living standards.

“As an incumbent government at a time of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, the Albanese government faces a similar challenge to the Biden/Harris Democratic campaign in the US,” concludes the report.

It references 2024 election defeats for Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government in the UK, and Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right party in France, and suggests the “precarious position” of the Albanese Government may not be based on its record in office.

“One explanation is that elections aren’t ultimately decided on retrospective assessments of government performance, but rather on prospective views of which party is best placed to deliver improved outcomes into the future,” it states.

Among the starkest findings, 50.3 per cent of Australians believe life will be worse in 50 years, while only 16.3 per cent believe it will improve.

“For the first time in our tracking data, which goes back to the start of the pandemic, more Australians think that the lives of Australia’s children are going to be worse than the current generation,” said the report’s author, Professor Nicholas Biddle, Head of the ANU School of Politics and International Relations.

He attributed this in part to dissatisfaction with housing policies and the ongoing impact of inflation and rising prices, as well as the real struggle of younger Australians to get their foot into the property market.

For many, it was hard to believe that any of the major parties had a suitable long-term solution to the housing crisis, he said.

“You can have two options — you can either reduce the value of what is the single biggest source of wealth, or you can make it easier for first-time owners to buy, but it’s very hard to see how you can do both at the same time,” he said.

Fears about Australia’s inadequate progress to tackle climate change were also feeding negative perceptions, Professor Biddle added. “The 42 per cent of Australians that think Australia isn’t doing enough are particularly pessimistic about the lives of Australia’s children.”

The “erosion of hope” for the future is leading to a lack of trust in government institutions and implies less satisfaction with democracy among those with a pessimistic outlook, concludes the survey of 3514 Australians in January and February.

Professor Biddle told The Nightly the study and other data collected by ANU researchers reflected “an anti-establishment mood” within the electorate that was not good news for any of the major parties, including the Greens.

People were even less positive towards established parties than they were three or four months ago.

It revealed a general disillusionment with “both politics as well as the ability of government to solve the problems which people are facing,” he said.

While it was to be expected that people had found the last couple of years challenging, Professor Biddle said he had been most taken aback by the long-term pessimism that shone through the report’s findings.

Nostalgia for the past — reflecting broader global trends—- is widespread.

Some 51.8 per cent take the romantic view that life was better 50 years ago, despite major improvements in real income, education levels and life expectancy, which in 1975 was 69.6 years for men and and 76.6 years for women compared to 81.1 and 85.1 today.

In another bleak revelation, people report their life satisfaction has dropped to its lowest level since the COVID-19 lockdowns, with mean satisfaction falling substantially to 6.45 out of 10 compared to 6.78 in early 2023.

It marks a significant turn for the worse compared to a 7.05 score for life satisfaction prior to the 2020 Black Summer bushfires and the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Financial stress remains high, with 33.1 per cent of Australians finding it difficult or very difficult to meet household expenses on their current income, a rise from 29.9 per cent in October 2024,” the report concludes.

It’s not all bad news as younger Australians, aged 18 to 24, are far more optimistic about the present relative to the past, and the future relative to the present.

But the sting in the tail is that they are significantly less interested in politics than those aged 45 years and over.

The report will be grim reading for the Government as it makes a final push to convince voters it is the best steward of the economy when it delivers a Federal budget on March 25.

After an April election was ruled out at the weekend, speculation rose that a new round of energy bill relief could be the centrepiece of the budget.

It would add to a raft of recently announced cost-of-living measures that include an $8.5 billion boost to bulk-billing through Medicare and more than $7 billion for public schools.

On Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese would not be drawn on whether more energy bill relief was on the way but touted his Government’s consistent delivery of “cost-of-living support”.

The budget would show “the same responsible economic management that we’ve seen making a difference in getting that inflation down, whilst providing support for people who really needed it during what are globally difficult economic times,” he said.

But surveys like the ANU’s indicate the Government’s economic message is not landing with voters.

“The kind of perceptions of how the economy is going is a little disconnected from what you might call the more objective measures,” said Prof. Biddle.

Indicators like unemployment and inflation data were only capturing one aspect of views on the economy while GDP had decreased in per capita terms and household incomes gone down.

“Certainly, people don’t see their circumstances as having improved in the same way that the national economy has been able to at least tick along,” he said.

The report reveals that trust in core institutions continues to decline, with only 33.7 per cent expressing confidence in the Federal government, down from 52.9 per cent just after the last Federal election.

Major parties were struggling to provide a coherent explanation as to how they will improve economic conditions, said Zareh Ghazarian, head of politics at Monash School of Social Sciences.

“It seems that nobody believes politicians, nobody believes political leaders that they can improve the situation.”