Major Government decisions

Q. Thinking about some of the major decisions the Federal Government has made over the years, do you think the following decisions have been good for Australia or bad for Australia?

	Total  good	Total bad		Very good	Good	Neither good nor bad	Bad	Very bad	Don’t know		2011 total good	2011 total bad
Introducing the GST	46%	22%		12%	34%	25%	13%	9%	7%		39%	30%
Privatising Qantas	28%	33%		6%	22%	26%	23%	10%	14%		23%	44%
Privatising Telstra	22%	42%		6%	16%	24%	27%	15%	12%		20%	53%
Privatising the Commonwealth Bank	24%	39%		7%	17%	24%	24%	15%	14%		26%	42%
Floating the dollar	33%	12%		11%	22%	28%	8%	4%	27%		46%	11%
Free trade agreements	38%	21%		11%	27%	24%	13%	8%	18%		41%	21%
Compulsory superannuation	71%	8%		36%	35%	14%	5%	3%	7%		79%	7%
Medibank (now Medicare)	63%	10%		31%	32%	19%	7%	3%	9%		76%	6%
Reducing subsidies to car manufacturing	28%	27%		10%	18%	28%	18%	9%	16%		–	–

Only the Government decisions to introduce compulsory superannuation (71%) and Medibank (63%) were considered good for Australia by a majority of respondents – although opinions on floating the dollar (33% good/12% bad), free trade agreements (38%/21%), the GST (46%/22%) and (by only a small margin) reducing subsidies to car manufacturing (28% good/27% poor) were more likely to be positive than negative.

The decisions to privatise three major national enterprises were more likely to be considered bad; 42% think privatising Telstra was bad (22% good), 33% thought privatising Qantas was bad (28% good) and 39% thought privatising the Commonwealth Bank was bad (24% good).