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Australians rate Morrison Government’s bushfire response grossly inadequate

A majority of Australians believe that the Morrison Government has been too slow to act in response to the recent bushfires, and has failed to address climate change as a real threat to the country. The backlash may have an impact on the next federal election, with a growing number of Australians seeking a government that will make climate change a flagstone of party policy.

And while the recent blazes and gradually warming temperatures have dominated the headlines this summer, there remains a sizeable minority of Australians who do not believe that climate change is linked to the severity of the bushfires.

BUSHFIRE LEADERSHIP FOUND WANTING

Over half of all Australians are unsatisfied with the Morrison government’s response to this summer’s bushfires. Overall, nearly 55% of people surveyed rated the government’s efforts as being either poor (18.2%) or very poor (36.3%). Women, in general, were more scathing of the response, with 57.9% of females compared to 49.9% of males rating the response as either poor or very poor.

Negative sentiment focused largely on loss of life, destruction of property and a failure to take steps to prevent bushfires.

“This has been heartbreaking,” a female respondent in the 35-44 year old age bracket said, adding that “Australia’s stance on the matter is disgusting. The Morrison government is ignorant and focuses solely on the economy at the expense of human and animal lives.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, younger generations are the most likely to be disappointed with the government’s response to the recent bushfires, with 79% of respondents aged 18-24 and 68% of 25-34-year-olds rating the response as being either poor or very poor.

Younger Australians generally laid the blame with conservative governments and politicians. A typical comment from a female respondent in the 25-34 year old age bracket stated: “I believe this is a culmination of long-standing inaction of the government – specifically Liberal governments – in smearing and dismantling climate change policies enacted by Labor such as the carbon tax due to lobbying pressure.”

In a sign that bushfires and climate change could be a millstone for the Morrison government in the years ahead, just 15.9% of respondents labelled the government’s response as good, while 6.9% gave a rating of excellent.

Middle aged and elderly Australians were far more likely to give the government positive ratings, with 20.8% of respondents aged between 45 and 54 and 19.4% aged between 55 and 64 agreeing that the response has been good or very good. Almost half (44.8%) of Australians over 65 were satisfied with the government’s response.

“It’s summertime in Australia. There are always fires, but this year they are some of the worst,” commented a male in the over 65 age bracket.

CLIMATE CHANGE & VOTING INTENTIONS

The government’s response to the bushfire crisis may be a key factor at the next federal election, with many Australians wanting to vote for the party that will address climate change most directly.

Just over a third of respondents polled (39.2%) said they would vote for a different party based on the issue of climate change, while 36.5% said the issue wouldn’t affect them at the ballot box.

The majority of young Australians aged 18-24 (62.1%) said it would impact their vote, compared to more than 57.3% of Australians over 65 years who said that it would not affect their vote.

Just under a quarter of Australians (24.3%) are still unsure whether it will influence their decision, suggesting that many believe addressing climate change is the responsibility of the individual rather than the government.

THE LINK BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE AND BUSHFIRES

It may not come as a surprise following the severity of recent events that the majority of respondents (63%) believe there is a link between worsening bushfires and climate change.

The survey suggests men are slightly harder to persuade, with 59.2% believing there is a link, compared to 65.2% of women.

Over a third (37%) of respondents said they do not believe that there is a link between climate change and bushfire severity.

The number of Australians who felt there is a link between climate change and the increasing frequency and severity of bushfires decreased steadily across the age groups. There were 93.1% of young Australians between 18 and 24, 73.2% of those between 25 and 34, 66.5% between 35 and 44, 65.3% 45 and 54 and 60.7% between 55 and 65 said yes there is a link.

Australians over the age of 65 were split 50/50 on whether there is a link between bushfire severity and climate change.

Middle-aged and older Australians were considerably more likely to cite arson, a lack of backburning and the influence of the Greens party as influences around the recent bushfires.

“There are many reasons for the bushfires, such as failure to manage and control fuel in forests, with some fires caused by arson and lightning. It is far too simplistic to blame the recent situation on C0², which is a gas in very low concentrations,” said a male respondent in the 55- 64 age bracket.

HOW ARE AUSSIES ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE?

The majority of Australians concur with the statement that climate change is a more pressing issue to address in the wake of the recent bushfires. In total 59.5% said they either agreed (23.7%) or strongly agreed (35.8%).

Younger Australians overwhelmingly agree, with 89.7% of those between 18 and 24, and 65.5% between 25 and 34 believing it is a pressing matter. Over half of respondents (58.2%) between 55 and 64 and 49.1% of those over the age of 65 felt the same. In every age demographic surveyed, those who strongly agreed formed the largest cohort.

However, almost a quarter (22%) of respondents don’t feel that climate change is a pressing issue despite the severe summer bushfires. This group was largely made up of older Australians, with 34.9% of over 65-year-olds saying they disagree.

When asked to nominate the single most effective way Australians can address climate change, over a third (38.5%) of respondents believe it’s down to the individual to reduce their carbon footprint. Another 36.8% said they would vote for the political party that has the most dedicated climate change policies – with 52% of Australians between 18 and 24 saying this.

Only 5.7% feel that protests (2.2%) and lobbying local MPs (3.5%) are the most effective ways to address climate change. The number of Australians who felt these methods were most effective were overwhelmingly under 25.

Just shy of a fifth (19%) of respondents said they don’t believe climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed at all.

A SLOW BUT PERCEPTIBLE CHANGE IN BEHAVIOUR

The state of the environment is fast becoming the single most pressing concern for Australians and many are acting accordingly. Following the Australian 2019/20 summer bushfires, 39% of respondents said they were changing habits to reduce their carbon footprint.

Of this 39%, the majority said they are doing so by reducing their water usage (87.2%), purchasing environmentally friendly products (81.5%) and using reusable coffee, storage or water containers (64.9%).

Nearly half of these respondents (49.6%) are choosing to reduce their time behind the wheel, while 19.8% are switching to sustainable energy.

The survey revealed that females are more likely to be reducing their carbon footprint, with 40.6% of women saying they are doing so, compared to just 27.8% of men.

DIGGING DEEP FOR BUSHFIRE AFFECTED COMMUNITIES

Many Australians – from the ultra famous to the everyday – have shown support to those affected by the bushfires. This has been reflected in the survey results, with the majority of respondents (64.5%) saying they made a donation to a bushfire charity.

Of that cohort, over half (54%) had donated at least $50, while just over one quarter (26.3%) had donated between $50 and $100.

There were 10.9% who said they donated between $100 and $250, while 7.2% donated between $250 and $500.

The 1.5% who donated $500 or more were more likely to be male, with 2.9% of men and 0.9% of women in this cohort.

EKAS KEY FINDINGS

There is widespread unhappiness with the Morrison government’s handling of the bushfire crisis with 54.5% of people surveyed rating the government’s efforts as being either poor (18.2%) or very poor (36.3%).

Recent events have affected people’s view of climate change. Some 63% of respondents said they believe there is a link between climate change and this summer’s severe bushfires.

Men are more likely to be sceptical about climate change than women, while younger Australians are by far the most concerned about climate change.

Nearly two thirds of surveyed Australians (64.5%) made financial donations to bushfire related charities during the course of summer.

This EKAS bushfires and climate change survey polled 1109 people of whom 417 were male and 692 were female

If you have a survey or research project you would like to conduct, you can visit www.ekas.com.au or contact Jaxon (jaxon@ekas.com.au) or Matt (matt@ekas.com.au) for more information

EKAS welcomes a new member to the team

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EKAS is excited to welcome Jess Farrow onboard in a role working with our partners to bring innovation and expertise to research projects.

“I am thrilled to be managing the panels and working in the world of innovative digital research and online community development,” Farrow says.

Prior to commencing at EKAS, Jess worked in education before moving into a training and development role with EY Sweeney’s field department. There, she worked across transport studies to inform strategy for user experience and customer journey.

Afterwards, she moved to Melbourne and worked on research projects for five of the eight state and territory tourism bodies, providing insights into the impact of events on the economy and advice on strategy for growth and standards.

Jess recently returned home to Sydney, bringing with her a keen interest in research, understanding respondent drivers, and a passion for user experience.

“Market research breaks the mould of general research – it informs every action and interaction we make, understanding the scope to which it applies, either the same or different, to those around us. It is what both unifies and sets us apart.

“I’m passionate about research because it is so innovative, and is just as much about the respondent as it is about the product, topic or service. It takes a topic and forces us to look at the people around us; real doctors, specialists, nurses, patients, families, businesses, men, women and children.

“We gain insight from these providers of opinion to inform the future of an industry, product or policy. If that isn’t exciting I don’t know what is,” Farrow says.

In the world of research for 2020 and beyond, Jess said she’d like to see communities of opinion leaders become the go-to for people to share thoughts and ideas on a range of fields.

“It would create new opportunities for researchers and clients to access and analyse unprompted consumer priorities and opinion.”

For research panel enquiries, you can contact Jess at jessica@ekas.com.au

EKAS debuts Smart Vending Machines at AMSRS conference

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A machine that surveys people, collects data and dispenses chocolate? What more could you want at a market research conference?

EKAS’s patented Smart Vending Machines had their debut at August’s AMSRS conference and wowed the crowd with their utility and ease of use.

Employing touch screen technology to collect valuable data, the machines help clients understand what buyers really think and feel at the time of purchase. They allow users to connect with customers and build their own panel by exposing brands to new audiences in public spaces.

Providing the opportunity for brands to get a sense of what customers are not just thinking, but feeling, the machines’ effectiveness stems from five key principles.

Entice: Each machine can feature custom hardware branding and on-screen advertising to attract customers with a product or offer.

Recruit: The machine prompts users to enter their contact details. This adds the user to a customer database and generates a unique single-use code offering access to a live questionnaire.

Engage: Businesses can conduct customer satisfaction surveys, product tests, ad testing or any form of Q&A research. Surveys can be edited and monitored in real-time.

Learn: A built-in camera captures customer expressions using facial recognition technology. This enriches self-reported survey data with valuable unconscious sentiment data.

Reward: Machines are equipped with coin slots and credit card payments for discounted products. They they can also dispense free items, tokens or printed discount vouchers.

“Our machines are available Australia-wide on short or long-term rental or to buy outright,” EKAS principal and co-creator Matt Thomas said.

“They can play any type of video or still ad and can be wrapped in the branding of your choice. Refrigeration options are also available.

“They’re highly adaptable and are perfect for anywhere there’s passing footfall, including supermarkets, shopping centres, airports, train stations, trade shows, exhibitions, festivals, workplaces, pubs, clubs and restaurants. They are genuinely a game-changer for the industry,” Thomas added.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

How market research took Netflix from daggy DVD rental company to global juggernaut

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“In the early days we were a smallish start-up and we employed maybe 75 people. We lacked in-house research facilities and there was no finance to travel to do market research,” Netflix’s former Director of Global Marketing, Barry Enderwick told the crowd at August’s AMSRS conference.

But that changed with the commencement of a partnership – one originally designed as a retail arrangement – with Best Buy in the US, it turned out to be a pivotal early moment for the fledgling DVD retail business.

“The most beneficial side of this partnership was it enabled us to do market research in their stores. And we learned a tonne,” Enderwick said.

Even when the company received bad news it often yielded important insights. “We started to do exit surveys with people who stopped using Netflix. We tracked why they were leaving, but also got a glimpse into their future intent, which was an essential learning,” he said.

“The growth phase of Netflix was really between 2004 and 2012. Part of this growth was finding out what Netflix was to consumers. ‘An efficient vending machine’ was the feedback we got,” Enderwick said.

“An Investigation needed to happen with the larger entertainment public. So we did a deep dive of respondents. We looked into what it was people hated about renting from Blockbuster.

“We distilled these learnings into a promise of ‘Movie enjoyment made easy’. There was no mention of renting or anything transactional. Convenience was the key. Everything had to convey a sense of ease to it,” Enderwick stressed.

On the back of these game-changing, research-driven insights, Netflix subscribers went from 30 million in 2004 to a staggering 200 million in 2012.

But new challenges arose even as growth skyrocketed. “In 2006 we launched videos via streaming,” Enderwick recalled. “The quality was terrible, but studios had nowhere to go with their assets and it meant revenue for them. But then they started charging Netflix higher amounts.”

It was very revealing, Enderwick said: “We were suffering headwinds, particularly as we launched in new markets overseas.

“Take South Korea. They had fast internet and there was no stigma around piracy because they paid for everything already. Consumers there encountered Netflix and basically thought, ‘why pay them for existing content when we can get a new movie for 80 cents’?

“In Germany there was a similar issue with content. They already had a similar offering to what we had. Very memorably in a focus group, our moderator said to a reluctant member, ‘But 50 million Americans are already using this’. The respondent retorted, “If 1000 flies go to sh*t, I don’t go to sh*t”.

Ultimately, more in-depth research was the key to the next growth phase. With foreign markets largely unimpressed with the existing product, the solution for Netflix was simply to create its own. Netflix Originals was born.

“With House of Cards we had great content that we owned the rights to. With it, they could truly expand, go international and go to the world,” Enderwick said.

Basically the story of Netflix was one of three phases, Enderwick concluded. “The startup phase, growth phase, and international phase. And it was all enabled by qualitative and quantitative research.”

Does too much consumer insight kill brands?

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“This is intended in good spirit, but I’ve got horrible things to say,” joked consumer psychologist Adam Ferrier as he took to the stage at August’s AMSRS conference. As an opening gambit to a room full of market researchers, it proved to be spot on.

“I worked for many years in market research. I love research, but the whole industry needs to be blown up… and it’s killing brands. We need to stop listening to the consumer and hear our brands instead,” Ferrier stressed.

As for how this was to be achieved, Ferrier’s wisdom can be neatly summed up in these seven talking points.

1) “You can spend 20 to 30 years in research but never learn about marketing,” Ferrier explained. This is not a good thing in Adam’s world. “We need to train researchers in marketing and team researchers with marketers. If you understand marketing better, you will get so much more out of your research,” he added.

2) “Brand is a promise kept and the most valuable thing the company owns,” Ferrier stated. Strong brands, he added, marry what people want, with what people do.

3) Putting the customer first above all is something of a trap. “Everyone talks about customer obsession and it’s doing my head in. Stop listening – it’s not accurate, it eliminates value and makes you homogeneous,” Ferrier advised.

4) Putting too much focus on what people want is also buying into a false economy. “It’s starting to dominate the conversation over what we do. Data is getting out of control. Customer knowledge is going through the roof, but knowledge of what a brand stands for is plummeting,” Ferrier said.

5) According to Malcolm Gladwell, “If you asked the consumer what they really wanted, they’d say they want to be left alone”. Mental availability is actually created largely by advertising, Ferrier says. “Essentially, you need to be persistent. Building brands means being in consumers’ faces and ensuring things are sticky.”

6) The most powerful business card must be the Chief Brand Officer, not the CEO. “Apple might be consumer-unfriendly, but one of their keys to success was putting the CEO and executive creative director together in the same room every week,” Ferrier revealed.

7) “Be honest about the limitations of market research: dive into how inaccurate it is and lean into its weakness. What we really need are stronger insights at strategic level,” was Ferrier’s parting advice.

Bigger budgets, better analytics, ban the robos? How to solve the election polling problem

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Back in June’s inaugural newsletter we brought you analysis of the hard numbers following the May federal election. Earlier this month EKAS were on hand to hear from three eminent polling experts for their own post-mortem.

Moderated by AMSRS conference chair Rebecca Huntley, the first question to the panel was whether the pollsters had really erred that badly.

Murray Goot, Emeritus Professor at Macquarie University, was particularly forthright on the subject: “The polls are always bad when they get the result wrong.

“The last time they got the result this wrong was in 1980. In 1980, when all the polls fell on the wrong side, the predicted results showed Labor ahead by as much as 9%, and the Liberals ultimately won.

“If we aggregated the polls at this election to create a poll of polls and treated them as one, the combined effort would have been out by 5.2% points in estimating the Coalition’s winning margin in primary vote. That’s five times the normal margin of error on an 8,000 person sample.”

But the polls have a much more chequered record than people might think. Goot explained: “In six elections since 1993, at least one poll got the first preference vote for Labor or the Coalition wrong by 4% or more.”

“So, not such a good performance,” Huntley deadpanned to general mirth.

Getting it right

“The key thing in polling is you’ve got to pick the winner,” Goot stressed. “The second thing is how close you come in the distribution of the numbers, but that’s less important than picking the winner.”

Amanda Hicks, Partner at KPMG Acuity, said it was certainly a big shock to the Australian public how far wrong the polls had got it at this election.

“When we do polling, there’s always a slight under-estimation of the Liberal vote. But I think the number of quiet Australians is the bigger picture,” she said.

“There are a few other external factors at play too. The populace were showing signs of being both disengaged with the process and distrustful of politicians. And at that point weaknesses in polling are brought to the fore. People simply aren’t engaged to the end, or are pre-polling long in advance, as we saw at this election.”

Chris Lonergan, Managing Director of Lonergan Research, was in agreement: “There is so much polling going on. Our response rate as pollsters, collectively, is very low. It’s no surprise people were saying ‘bugger off mate’ and Liberal voters tend to say that more.”

The quiet Australians

Lonergan’s comments brought the ‘Shy Tory’ theory to the fore – the tendency of people who vote conservative to be less willing to admit it to pollsters.

“I’m not sold on the Shy Tory view myself. In the US election in 2015 and UK Brexit referendum in 2016 they didn’t find reluctant Tories,” Goot said.

Lonergan countered: “Then how do we explain that we can ask people five minutes after they vote in Australia and still get the wrong numbers?

“The real question, I think, is why are we missing them? They’re likely disengaged with the process, as Amanda said.

“For the exact opposite reason, Greens voters are often overestimated. We’ve had groups of Greens voters lining up to take an exit poll and we’re saying, ‘Guys, this isn’t how it works’,” Lonergan added.

Is the issue over-estimating the Labor vote instead of just underestimating the Liberal vote, Huntley theorised. After all, surely more data comes from the hyper-engaged, who tend to lean left.

“It’s certainly a combination of the two, Lonergan said, adding “if you look at robos [robotic telephone polling], you don’t know if it’s a business or household you’re getting. It’s a factor we take into consideration when we do our weighting.”

Harris advanced the theory of the ‘Inaccessible Tory’, covering those who pre-voted or flat out avoided polling altogether.

“It’s certainly not cool to be a Liberal voter; people are unlikely to tell you, or avoid being asked,” Lonergan concurred.

“It does pose a very big question for pollsters, Goot said: “Imagine you included a hypothetical survey instrument on engagement. You’d expect, with a Shy Tory view, the most disengaged would be Liberal voters.

“But then, they still got the polling wrong in Queensland and it’s the weakest Labor state. If it’s not ok to be a Liberal there, where is it?”

Media influence – are they marking their own homework?

Outside of the voters themselves, Huntley pivoted to the issue of the media’s relationship with polling companies – and whether it was a healthy one.

There is a parasitic relationship, Goot observed. “The media gets its sense of what’s happening via the polls, so the media is compromised. They pay for and own the polls they publish and are largely uncritical of the polling.

“It deserves more criticism than it gets. The polls haven’t been credible for a long time. There’s no way you can run poll after poll and find the results haven’t moved, it just doesn’t happen.

“There was a suspicion that Labor was going to win, so they felt the need to reflect this in the polls.”

Other polling concerns

The ancillary issues of polling that often get overlooked were also debated by the panelists. Chief among them was the much maligned ‘don’t know’ option within surveys.

Goot pointed out the ‘don’t knows’ were “a big part of the 1948 US election debacle”, which saw incumbent President Harry Truman win an unexpected second term against highly favoured Republican Thomas Dewey.

He added: “It’s still relevant. When you ask a question you’ll get 10% to 15% who say they don’t know. Our categories don’t allow us to distinguish those. But in the end, there’s no reason you can assume they will split like everyone else.

“I think we should ask, why not push more of these don’t knows (something like 3/1) to the conservative side?”

For the don’t knows, Longeran proposed to “give them one option the second time around, and they’ll either say what they think or end the survey.”

Budget was another vexing issue for the pollsters.

Lonergan took up the charge, saying: “Every pollster knows that robos aren’t as good as face to face polling. But unless budgets rise, there’s no option but to robopoll. And that’s always going to produce lesser quality data.

“Personally, I think we should make robo polling illegal. People hate it, and it’s driving down the cost. I’d rather see it banned, despite the fact we make money out of it.”

Goot was also in favour of bigger budgets devoted by the media for polling. “What they could also do is be more open about methodology. It’s scandalous how little they show. And it would be refreshing if they expressed less certainty about what they don’t know.”

Harris had the last word: “As we reel-in more and more data, we need to look into how we get more sophisticated. Overall, we need to look at how we get better at predictive analytics.”