Sex and social service high on Oz voters' list

Melbourne, June 23 : Aussie voters look for more sex and nudity in magazines and films, invest more money in social service, and consider a big business to be more dangerous than trade unions, revealed a new survey.

The latest Trends in Australian Public Opinion report, which charts the changes of voters' opinions over the last 20 years, shows that since 2004, the proportion of people wanting more sex and nudity has remained at 10 per cent.

However, the survey, of nearly 2000 people in the wake of the 2007 Federal Election, revealed that in the last 14 years, number of voters who believed that there was too much raunchiness in films and magazines has fallen from 59 per cent to 48 per cent in 2007.

The study further indicated that the Australians preferred Greens leader Bob Brown over ex-treasurer Peter Costello for the Prime Minister's post in the last election.

It was also found that people in Australia were increasing supporting social spending and trade unions, and that they would like to see more money go into social services than receive tax cuts.

Most of the voters in last year's federal election thought that big businesses had too much power, as against 37 per cent who thought that trade unions were more powerful.

However, the scenario has now changed as since 1996, the proportion of Australians who thought unions wielded too much power had fallen by 25 per cent

Australian National University (ANU) political scientist professor Ian McAllister said that the reason behind Australians now having less fear of unions and wanting more money in social services, can be the hangover from the pro-business era in the Eighties.

He added that the fall in people seeing trade unions as a threat was not in any way connected to Labour being in government.

"It's something that's happened irrespective of which party's in government, so it's what we call a secular change. In the 1980s, people were seeing trade union leaders in the mass media, and they saw them as being the bogyman. Now there are very few strikes, very little industrial disputation and they tend to see more people in big business acting badly," News.com.au quoted Professor McAllister, as saying.

He added that people wanted more social reforms as they had become tired of the focus on market reforms.

"The high-point of market-oriented reforms was basically the 1980's, and everything has reversed a bit since then."

The survey also indicated that a large number of voters wanted a reduction in the number of immigrants in Australia.

While in 2004, about 35 per cent of Australians wanted less immigration, the figure rose up to 46 percent in 2007.

Only 15 per cent said that they wanted higher levels of immigration in 2007.

ANI