Covid-19 changed the Australians

The first Australia Talks National Survey since the advent of COVID-19 – a study of 60,000 Australians — reveals how Australians have enjoyed being bossed about in the past year.

Eight in 10 agree that the nation should keep its international borders shut until the pandemic is under control globally.

State governments enacting tough lockdowns enjoy rapturous levels of support.

And 70 per cent of Australians agree that “sometimes people’s freedoms need to be restricted to keep Australians safe” – a whopping 16 percentage point consolidation of this national view since the last survey 18 months ago.

But when confronted with a genuine health crisis, it seems our preparedness to make sacrifices intensifies further.

When asked between March 2-8, before health authorities recommended Australians under 50 take the Pfizer vaccine, 85 per cent of us said we believed that all Australians who can safely get a COVID-19 vaccine should do so, even if it’s not mandatory.

And more than half of us – 54 per cent – went further, saying that the government should make vaccination compulsory.

This view was strongest among the young (63 per cent of 18-24-year-olds) and older Australians (64 per cent of 65-74-year-olds and 69 per cent of those over 75) with enthusiasm lower among the middle-aged.

# Back in March, more than half of Australians thought the  COVID-19 vaccination should be mandatory

How we are changed?

Apart from exposing our latent natural appetite for subjugation, COVID-19 also changed us, according to the survey.

As expected, we’ve become more relaxed about the prospect of working flexibly.

Twelve per cent of Australians are now working from home at least eight hours a day – triple the pre-COVID rate.

During the height of the pandemic, it reached 25 per cent.

And the taste of commute-free life was sweet; 44 per cent of Australians believed they’d be happier if they spent less time hiking to and from work, a response rate 12 percentage points higher than in the last Australia Talks survey.

On the question of whether COVID changed us for better or worse, opinions are mixed.

Nearly half of respondents (47 per cent) reported their sense of priorities had improved since the onset of the pandemic.

Twenty-three per cent feel that their relationship with their spouse or partner is better, and 32 per cent of respondents say they’re more tech-smart than they were (though 63 per cent say their technology skills have stayed the same).

 # State governments that clamped down borders received rapturous support

Our mental health has suffered

But there’s a heavy underlying cost.

Thirty-two per cent of Australians feel less fit and healthy than they were before the pandemic, and 30 per cent report that their mental health has deteriorated.

Looking closer at the mental health situation, something becomes incredibly clear: Australians’ state of mental health post-COVID is directly dependent on age.

Put simply: the younger you are, the more likely you are to feel less mentally well now than you did before the pandemic.

Among 18-24-year-olds, a full 52 per cent say their mental health has deteriorated. But those aged over 75 are in a much more chipper state; only 11 per cent of them feel worse now than they did pre-COVID.

# The younger you are, the more likely you felt your mental health decline during the pandemic

Supportive to the governments

Post-COVID, most Australians are strongly supportive of the way Australian governments – federal and state – handled the crisis.

The Morrison Government won 67 per cent approval for its handling of COVID, while the attitudes toward state governments ranged open enthusiasm in Victoria, Queensland and NSW (70 per cent, 77 per cent and 83 per cent, respectively) to hysterical fandom in South Australia and Western Australia (both on 90 per cent).

Australians also have congratulated themselves on their conduct during the crisis; 78 per cent reported that they complied “very well” with public health orders and restrictions.

When will we be back to normal?

Well, 69 per cent of respondents – when prompted to nominate a timeframe for Australia “getting more or less back to normal” – plumped for within the next two years. The most common answer was “between 12 and 18 months”, but 8 per cent felt that things will never get back to normal.

What is normal, anyway? What is certain from the second Australia Talks survey is that we’ve changed in ways we never could have foreseen the first time around.