Insights

Living in Australia 2026: your questions, answered

Answered by the team behind Living in Australia 2026: Brigid Quinlan, Jacquie Norton and Dan Evans. Australians want broadly the same things from the place they live. What they actually get differs depending on where that is. These are the big stories from Living in Australia 2026, and the responses from our Community Views team to the questions you sent us. Liveability has gone backwards. The Overall Liveability Index sat at 62.6 in 2023 and is 60.6 in 2026, two points below where it started. Two attributes are doing most of the damage, and both are top five for importance. Feeling safe rose from 63% to 69% on importance while experience fell from 6.7 to 6.4. Affordable decent housing rose from 46% to 49% while experience fell from 4.9 to 4.6. Housing affordability is the most universal priority we measure, named by 46% to 51% of residents in every settlement type in the country. Four things fall away consistently with distance from a capital city: public transport, shops and things to do, health services and education. They become more important to people as they become harder to reach. Outer growth areas record the lowest liveability because of a timing problem, not a difference in values. Road congestion there returns an experience score of 4.3, the lowest of anything we measure anywhere. Only 4% of Australians feel their community's views are very well considered in local decision-making. Those who feel heard rate their area 71.0 out of 100. Those who feel ignored rate it 49.9.