"Australians back carbon pricing, want more action on climate change."
"Three years on from Tony Abbott's successful campaign to "axe" the carbon tax, new figures show a significant majority of Australians now support putting a price on carbon emissions.
Key points
63 per cent of Australians want carbon pricing back.
74 per cent support more government action on climate change.
Coalition voters remain split on carbon pricing.
The data has prompted former Liberal leader John Hewson to cast doubt on the political truism that former Liberal leader Tony Abbott's campaign to "axe" the carbon tax won him the last election.
Data from the ABC's Vote Compass shows 63 per cent of Australians support a price on carbon emissions, up from 50 per cent during the 2013 election.
The results also show three-quarters of Australians want the government to do more to tackle climate change.
Mr Hewson, who broke ranks with his party in 2011 by supporting an emissions trading scheme, said the electorate had been ahead of government positions on climate change for 15 years.
"I know the party feels they won the last election on the carbon tax but the bottom line to me is they won the election as a vote against the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government," Mr Hewson told the ABC.
"Abbott just ran a massive scare campaign on the carbon tax and he was helped in that ..."[Labor] never tried to counteract that at all, they never tried to market why they were doing it and linking it with the science and trying to educate the electorate."
Rural communities back more action
Vote Compass found 70 per cent of people in rural communities wanted to see the government take more action on climate change, while rural support for carbon pricing was at 57 per cent.
"Traditionally those [rural] communities have been very sceptical about climate change but some of the things happening in those regional communities in terms of extreme temperatures, in terms of drought and in terms of a range of other phenomena have really confronted people," Centre of Excellence for Climate Science director Andy Pitman said.
Mr Hewson said urban and rural voters alike now understood climate change was real and wanted action.
"I notice that recent feature [article] of [Nationals leader] Barnaby Joyce, where he looked down at a creek and said, 'maybe climate change is real'," Mr Hewson said.
"I think the rural community understand these issues. They understand climate perhaps better than some people in the city."
Coalition split evident on carbon pricing
Coalition voters remained divided on carbon pricing, although support was up 13 per cent compared to 2013 when Mr Abbott campaigned almost daily against the carbon tax."
