Posted October 25, 2011 16:26:44
A national study has found that Australians' satisfaction with democracy has dipped to its lowest level since 1998.
Australian National University research on attitudes to government and public services found a growing number of Australians are concerned about the quality of government.
While satisfaction with democracy in Australia remains high by international standards, it is lower in 2010 and 2011 than in the earlier part of the decade.
Fewer people are satisfied with the direction in which the country is headed and there are far more people mentioning "better government" as the main problem facing Australia.
But ANU Professor John Wanna says neither side of politics is particularly to blame.
"The government, when they're making announcements that seemingly are on the run, changing their mind, going backtracking, not having consulted, I think that leads a lot of people to say 'does everybody know what's going on?'.
"I don't think automatically that means people think the Opposition know what's going on, so I'm not making a partisan comment on that, but I think there's a general feeling that there's a malaise across the political system that no-one seems to have the answers."
Respondents wanting a "better government" increased from 9 per cent to 18 per cent since the previous poll.
Professor Wanna describes the minority Federal Government as embattled.
"I think that finding about better governments really indicates a huge communication problem," he said.
"It may be to do with that we've gone through a period of fairly intense political adversarialism in a context of minority government.
"Maybe that's an issue about mixed messages coming from governments, or even backflips."
The poll also shows that the economy remains the number one issue for voters, who are growing increasingly concerned about the quality and direction of the Federal Government.
Confidence in democracy on the slide - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
