Tony Barry

In 2022, the election that Albanese won, for some reason, climate change was the number one issue, even though we were just coming out of COVID.

And you'd expect people would be very anxious about recovery and

and the financial aspects of it.

But to my somewhat surprise, climate change, which is a very important issue, was the number one issue for voters.

Now, that's down to about 6%, 7%.

That's because it's been overtaken by these pervasive concerns about paying rent, meeting mortgage, you know, and you hear these in focus groups saying,

these really gut-wrenching stories.

We've heard it in regional places just like Farrah where they say, well, you know, my children need new school shoes and I can't afford it.

I've got to find $80 and I'm going to have to make sacrifices where it's going to have to be groceries or I'm going to have to do without something.

And you hear these terrible stories about mums in particular will prioritise

the needs of others in their family over themselves.

And healthcare is one of those things.

They will forego a medical appointment just because without bulk billing, that's money that they feel needs to be spent on their children.

At the moment, that's just not an issue for them.

We had an insight that...

this was brewing before the surge in their primary vote.

We didn't necessarily think it would go to One Nation because, you know, they were still at 5% and 6%.

But in focus groups, people would sort of say, oh, just burn it all down, mate, burn it all down.

And when you hear that consistently in focus groups in North Queensland, Adelaide, Perth, inner suburban Sydney, you start to sort of see it as a pattern.

So then we asked them quantitatively for the Fin Review report