Some of the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2009 results are now in the Australian Social Science Data Archive, so we can start looking at some trend data.
I’m sorry to report that support for cutting taxes compared to more spending on social services may have hit an all-time low in the history of Australian opinion polling. Though the precise question varies over time, we have similarly worded questions going back to the late 1960s. In 1967 and 1969, 26% of respondents wanted tax cuts. In 2009, it was just below that on 25% (though the lack of an explicit ‘depends’ option in the 1960s means that there were ‘soft’ supporters of both taxing and spending in their totals). The three most recent surveys are in the figure below.
Andrew Norton 