ANU Poll 2018: Role of Government and Populism

This poll is the twenty-sixth in an ongoing series of polls being undertaken by the Social Research Centre for the ANU. Their purpose is to assess Australians' opinions on important and topical issues, with an emphasis on international comparisons. These polls are typically conducted three times a year, or about every four months. Some questions appear in every poll in order to provide information about changes in opinion over time; the majority of questions appear in one poll only. This research is used to inform public debate and policy about issues affecting Australia.

The aim of this poll is to measure Australians’ opinions on which services government should provide, how they should be delivered, and which level of government is most appropriate. We include an experiment-based test of respondents’ attitudes to randomised controlled trials of policy interventions. Finally, we measure the extent of respondents’ populist attitudes and their personality (‘Big 5’) characteristics.