Australians are most concerned about housing affordability, with 71 percent telling the 2025 Social Justice Stocktake that it was their top social issue this election on May 3.
Mental health came next, with 57.6 percent concerned about the community’s mental wellbeing and 40.3 percent concerned about their own.
Financial hardship and inclusion, at 53.2 percent, and access to health care, at 50.4 percent, rounded out the issues worrying more than half of all voters nationally. Fifth ranked was alcohol and drug misuse, at 43.4 percent.
All the states ranked those issues in that same order.
The Australian Capital Territory followed the pattern for the first four, but ranked climate change as its fifth most important concern.
However, the Northern Territory had an entirely different ranking—alcohol and drug misuse topped its list. This was followed by housing affordability and homelessness, then family violence, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander discrimination and disadvantage, and climate change also making an appearance in fifth place.
The Stocktake is an initiative of the Salvation Army, and its general manager of Policy and Advocacy, Jennifer Kirkcaldy, said there was “surprising agreement about the issues affecting communities right across Australia, regardless of where they are and how they vote.”
Most Properties Unaffordable For Low-Income Households
The 2024 Anglicare Rental Affordability Snapshot showed 82 percent of properties are unaffordable for families earning minimum wage, and 98 percent are unaffordable for single parents on minimum wage.The figure rises to 100 percent for people on JobSeeker or the Disability Support Pension, and retirees on the Age Pension.
While mental health was the second most common community concern, it was the challenge that respondents themselves encountered most frequently.
“Mental health is connected to every other social justice concern raised in this report and particularly linked with housing stress and homelessness,” the report says.
It cites a 2022 UNSW study, which found that 640,000 Australian households weren’t having their housing needs met, and a 2023 report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) which said that as of June 2022, 174,600 households were waiting to be allocated public housing, with 68,000 of them being considered of “greatest need.”
Twenty-one percent of Australians (4.2 million people) have experienced mental ill-health in the past 12 months, according to another study from the AIHW in 2024.
“People living with mental illnesses have a life expectancy 10 to 15 years shorter than the general population, and this trend is growing,” the Stocktake says.
Similarly, financial hardship was raised as an issue by more than double the number of people in this Stocktake than in 2021.
Main Issues for Marginal Electorates
Across the 10 most marginal electorates in the upcoming election, priorities vary significantly, and sometimes unexpectedly. For instance, the only marginal Tasmanian electorate, Sturt, doesn’t rate climate change among its top five concerns:| Ranking of issues by importance | ||||||||
| Electorate | Margin (percent) | Held by | Housing | Mental health | Financial hardship | Access to health care | Alcohol and drug misuse | Climate change |
| Deakin (Vic) | 0.02 | Liberal | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| Bennelong (NSW) | 0.04 | Labor | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| Gilmore (NSW) | 0.17 | Labor | 1 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 4 | |
| Menzies (Vic) | 0.42 | Liberal | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 5 | |
| Sturt (SA) | 0.45 | Liberal | 1 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 4 | |
| Wentworth (NSW) | 0.58 | Independent | 2 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 3 | |
| Moore (WA) | 0.91 | Liberal | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| Lyons (Tas) | 0.92 | Labor | 2 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 5 | |
| Canning (WA) | 1.20 | Liberal | 1 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 2 | |
| Curtin (WA) | 1.32 | Independent | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
Over half reported that financial hardship was an issue in their community, and 25 percent identified it when thinking about themselves.
Bennelong, Gilmore, Menzies, and Stuart all shared the same result to varying degrees: most people identified housing affordability and homelessness as an issue in the community. Up to 40 percent revealed they were struggling with it themselves.
This was followed by mental health, which was identified as a concern at varying degrees—between 36 percent of voters in Bennelong to 57 percent in Menzies.
As might be expected in one of Australia’s wealthiest electorates, priorities in Wentworth were slightly different, with mental health being the main issue for 62 percent of voters.
Housing affordability was still rated second, with 56.2 percent of people saying it’s an issue in the community and 33.3 percent identifying it as an issue for themselves. And even there, those percentages are up on 2022, when they were 59 and 29 percent respectively.
In Western Australia, the most common pattern was repeated, with housing affordability the most important issue for 76.2 percent of voters in Moore, 78.8 percent in Canning, and 66 percent in Curtin.
Mental health came in second in two of those electorates—it was a concern for 63.4 percent in Moore and 47.5 percent Curtin—but in Canning, it was alcohol and drug misuse.
The people of Lyons, in Tasmania, also have differing priorities. For just over three-quarters of them, access to health care is the major issue in the community, followed closely by housing affordability at 72.6 percent.
Candidates hoping to swing the vote in those seats, and across the country, would do well to note the report’s conclusion.
“The sentiment of respondents was different this time. In 2021, we heard a sense of helplessness about addressing social injustice,” the report said.
“This year, there was also an overwhelming sense of urgency in response to perceived governmental inaction—many respondents left messages calling on decision-makers to put politics aside and prioritise action.”
