Support for NBN not improving

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 21 February 2012 09:07

IT Industry - Market

Various media outlets are today carrying an AAP report of a survey that purports to show increased support for the NBN. Had these outlets dug a bit deeper they might have found that the story was somewhat different.

According to the AAP report, "Australians supporting the high-speed National Broadband Network (NBN) exceed opponents by more than two to one, a new survey shows. The Essential Research survey released on Monday showed 56 percent of 1042 respondents were in favour of the NBN, up from 54 percent when the question was previously asked in April 2011.

"As well, support for the $35.9 billion project has risen by eight percentage points from 48 percent in February last year. Some 25 percent of those surveyed opposed the NBN, down from 31 percent in February 2011."

This is virtually the text that Essential Research include with its published result of the online survey of 1042 people, but a cursory glance at the table of results would show that, if anything, support for the NBN has declined since the first survey, back in September 2010.

The total in favour (56 percent) has returned to the September 2010 level, but the total opposing has increased from 18 to 25 percent. The good news is that this figure is well down on the February 2011 peak of 31 percent opposing.

However the percentage strongly opposing has grown form six percent in September 2010 to 10 percent and the percentage strongly favouring has fallen from 27 percent to 20 percent in the same period.

The survey also reported overwhelming support from Labor and Green voters (80 percent and 77 percent respectively) and seemed to suggest that the Coalition's sustained attacks on the project are having only modest success: Coalition voters were evenly divided for and against.