Living in Australia 2026: your questions, answered

What makes people feel safe and like they belong, and can a council do anything about it?

"Community Sentiment around safety, feeling and being safe. Do community feel connected, what makes them feel connected. The importance of creating resilience within a community."

Community Safety, Kingston City Council

"How do communities develop their distinctive character? What makes some communities fiercely protective of THEIR character? What factors are needed to develop and maintain outstandingly special communities?"

Community Projects and Partnerships, Fairfield City Council

"Values and lived experiences. This thing called 'Australian Values' is touted around. What are they?"

Grants, Oberon Council

Answered by Jacquie Norton, Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

Safety and belonging stand out as areas where local conditions matter considerably. Unlike many aspects of liveability that are strongly shaped by whether a place is metropolitan, regional or rural, experiences of safety and belonging can vary substantially between individual communities.

When people speak about what they value about their local area, they talk about friendly neighbours, multicultural gatherings, local festivals, support for community facilities such as churches, schools, hospitals, libraries and sporting clubs, and that 'people look out for one another'.

Holding all 16 liveability measures against each other, feeling safe and a sense of belonging share their strongest drivers: how prosperous the local area feels, access to nature and green space, a sense of community, and social cohesion.

Perceived local prosperity is by far the biggest contributor to feeling safe, and it is not about employment statistics. It is about whether a place looks like it is doing well, which is why residents raising safety in their own words talk about lighting, maintenance, graffiti and neglected sites rather than policing. For belonging, the two strongest contributors by a clear margin are social cohesion and opportunity for all. People feel they belong somewhere that feels fair and accepting.

An example where we were able to show this at the local level was a Community Views project in an inner Melbourne council, which found a substantial difference in liveability between two suburbs, with one suburb's residents reporting poorer experiences of safety and social cohesion. Their comments pointed to highly visible local conditions: cleanliness, lighting, anti-social behaviour and the condition of public spaces. That council's work to revitalise those areas brings together public realm improvements, cleanliness, activation, safety and business confidence, which shows how action on the condition and vitality of a place can address several of the foundations of feeling safe and connected at once.

Four practical levers for a council come out of this:

• Maintain the visible condition and upkeep of public space.
• Green space and tree canopy.
• Sport, recreation and the places that host informal contact, which is the single strongest driver of social wellbeing.
• Inclusion work, because fairness is what belonging rests on.

Councils should treat safety and belonging as one connected agenda, resource maintenance and green space as social infrastructure rather than amenity, and target inclusion effort at the groups furthest behind rather than spreading it evenly.

What makes people feel connected, and how does that build resilience?

Asked by Community Safety, Kingston City Council. Answered by Jacquie Norton, Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

Across Australia, 'a strong sense of community' is the sixth most important attribute to residents and the fourth most positively experienced. However this differs by place. Regional residents both value it more (44% against 32%) and experience it more strongly (6.9 against 6.2), while outer suburbs record the lowest rating in the country. In regional areas in particular it comes up often when people are asked what they value about their local area.

Those who feel a stronger sense of community tend to have better levels of social wellbeing and mental health and, importantly, feel more safe. Community connection can be supported by relationships with neighbours, community groups and activities, welcoming public spaces, local shops and centres, parks and recreation facilities, and opportunities for people to take part in community life.

Safety and connection also contribute to community resilience. Resilience is not simply the ability to recover from a major event such as a bushfire, flood or economic shock. It is also the underlying capacity of a community to adapt to ongoing change and support one another when challenges arise. Communities with strong social networks, trust, participation, access to services and inclusive places may be better equipped to share information, mobilise resources and support vulnerable residents during a disruption.

A robust survey of your community can help you understand some of the social foundations of resilience, whether people feel safe, connected and supported, and how those experiences vary between places and population groups. Tracking them over time also shows whether those foundations are strengthening or becoming more vulnerable as the community changes.

How do communities develop a distinctive character, and why do they defend it?

Asked by Engagement and Advocacy, Bega Valley Shire Council. Answered by Jacquie Norton, Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

Communities develop their distinctive character over time through the interaction of their physical environment, built form, history, people, local economy and social life. It can come from tangible features, such as beaches, bushland, heritage streetscapes, town centres, housing, parks and public spaces, but also from less tangible qualities such as friendliness, diversity, creativity, local traditions, community connection and a shared sense of identity.

We understand this through what people say they value about where they live, how they experience their local area, and what they want to protect or change. Importantly, the things that make a community special are not necessarily the same everywhere. The combination of qualities, and the meaning residents attach to them, creates a place's distinctive character.

Communities can become fiercely protective of that character when people feel a strong sense of attachment, belonging and ownership over their place. This becomes particularly visible during periods of change, such as population growth, housing development, increasing density, demographic change or infrastructure investment. Resistance to change may not simply be opposition to development itself. It can reflect concern that the qualities people most value about their community could be lost in the process.

Outstanding communities therefore need more than good infrastructure or attractive surroundings. They need to retain what people value while adapting to changing needs. That means understanding the community's valued qualities, supporting social connection and belonging, providing appropriate housing and services, maintaining access to nature and public spaces, enabling economic opportunity, and involving residents meaningfully in decisions about the future of their place.

How do we use this data in a strategy, a business case or a grant application?

"How the liveability of an inner west municipality in Victoria compares across the country and how we can use this information to strengthen grant applications etc."

Community Outcomes, City of Maribyrnong

"Meaningful data to use for our next Community Strategic Plan to identify the community's priorities."

Corporate Planning and Performance, City of Newcastle

"I've started a new role in a different Council. I'm planning our next Economic Prosperity Plan and I'm looking to unpack place based evidence in an area very different to my previous one."

Economic Development, City of Norwood Payneham & St Peters

"How to use the data practically, translating the survey findings into inputs for strategic land use or community plans."

Statutory Planning, Kingborough Council

Answered by Brigid Quinlan, Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

The most common use is prioritisation. You take the attributes residents rank highest in importance, look at where their experience is weakest, and that gap tells you where action is most likely to improve lives.

For a strategy, that means councils like Ipswich in Queensland, Clarence Valley and Northern Beaches in New South Wales have embedded specific measures into their corporate, health and wellbeing, Disability Inclusion Action, environmental and sustainability, and community plans, as indicators of progress. That lets them report on outcomes residents recognise rather than only on outputs delivered. Running the survey year on year gives an organisation the ability to track results against its own benchmark and measure progress.

The same gap analysis underpins a business case or a grant application. It gives you the quantified, evidenced 'why here, why now' that funding bodies and decision-makers look for, backed by resident voice rather than assumption. For example, the data may show that:

• access to health services is highly valued but poorly experienced in a growing regional community;
• congestion and transport access are increasingly affecting liveability in an outer growth area;
• access to parks and natural environments is a major contributor to liveability as an area becomes more densely populated; or
• community facilities, walking infrastructure and accessible public spaces become more important as a population ages.

And this is not just for councils. The survey asks what residents value, how they experience their local area, and what they want local decision-makers to focus on, not council specifically, so it can be run for a range of organisations and applied to different settings. When 66% of peri-urban residents nominate transport infrastructure, or 72% of rural service area residents nominate health services, that is a signal directed at whoever holds the lever, including state agencies, health services and infrastructure bodies.

How does local infrastructure delivery support liveability, and how does the data support a funding case?

Asked by Infrastructure, Ku-ring-gai Council. Answered by Jacquie Norton, Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

Measuring what your community wants and needs gives you an evidence base for understanding how local infrastructure contributes to liveability, and for strengthening the case for investment in it.

People experience liveability at a local level. Their quality of life is shaped by their ability to access the things they need every day: housing, transport, shops and services, health and education, parks and natural environments, community facilities, employment and opportunities to connect with others. Many of those outcomes are directly enabled or influenced by local infrastructure.

Data from the community helps identify where infrastructure need is greatest from the community's own perspective. By measuring both what residents value and how they currently experience their local area, you can identify where there is a gap between the importance of an aspect of liveability and how well that need is currently being met.

While Australians broadly value many of the same ingredients of a good place to live, the infrastructure required to deliver those outcomes varies according to population growth, demographics, geography, existing infrastructure and local conditions.

This strengthens the justification for infrastructure funding by adding the community need and outcomes case to traditional evidence such as population forecasts, asset capacity and economic analysis. Rather than simply demonstrating that an area needs a new or upgraded asset, the data helps explain why it matters to the community, which liveability outcomes it supports, how significant the need is, and how that need compares with other priorities.

Over time, repeated measurement can also help show whether infrastructure investment is translating into better community outcomes, which moves the conversation from 'what infrastructure did we deliver?' to 'what difference did that infrastructure make to people's experience of their local area?'

What is the housing story underneath liveability?

"Very interested in the renters experiences, is this in the data as well? Also does this change depending upon age and location of the renters?"

Sports and Community Planning, Logan City Council, asked live

"Housing affordability within Perth's central neighbourhoods: Central Perth, West Perth, East Perth, South Perth, Leederville, Crawley, Nedlands. What are the differences and what contributes to these differences? How can planning policy influence market sale price?"

Urban Planning, City of Perth

"Adaptive reuse and typology demands. How can we retain local character with typologies for affordable housing. What is the preference of people for varied housing typologies?"

Heritage and Architecture, Northern Beaches Council

Answered by Dan Evans, who leads Informed Decisions' community views service.

We do not measure 'housing' in Community Views. We measure access to affordable, decent housing, deliberately, because it is not just the dwelling, it is the value and quality of it, and both are anchored to life stage. Affordable means you can financially access the housing your stage of life requires. Decent means the dwelling meets what that stage requires.

The service gives you two things together: how important housing is to your community, and how well residents feel it is delivered locally. Across most councils, housing ranks among the highest on importance and the lowest on experience. That gap is the finding, and it is the largest and most consistent one we see anywhere in the data. It is the clearest signal of unmet need there is.

That is why the story underneath liveability is a tenure story. Roughly a third of Australians own outright, a third are paying a mortgage, a third rent. Outright owners have been the main beneficiaries of housing as an asset class. Mortgage holders have benefited on a choppier ride. Renters wear the cost.

But tenure is a life stage, not an identity. Most people move through all three. So when ownership tracks so strongly with how people rate their area, their financial circumstances and their mental health, we are not looking at a fixed group. We are looking at a stage of life that has become materially harder, and materially longer.

Because we ask home ownership, dwelling type, household composition and length of time in the area, that gap can be opened up: renters against owners, younger residents against older, newcomers against long-term. That tells you where housing is underperforming, for whom, and by how much, which is what turns a national problem into a local decision. It supports advocacy to other levels of government, informs housing strategy and planning responses, targets intervention at the groups most affected and, tracked over time, tests whether any of it worked.

Housing is often seen as a national problem. I would rather put it the other way around. It is the single biggest opportunity we have to lift quality of life for Australians.

How was this done, and can we trust it for our community?

"Are you [able to] share your sampling strategy and how representative the survey may be of regional, Aboriginal and diverse experiences across Australia? Are we able to access disaggregated data (disaggregated by characteristic clusters)?"

Asked live in the session

"Is it a phone survey? Because representation can be skewed to those who actually answer their phones to unknown numbers."

Follow-up, asked live

"How are areas counted? Only 5,000 Australians study, out of 27+ million; please explain the relevance."

Community volunteer

Answered by Brigid Quinlan, Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

If you’re interested in our methodology, this case study explains in more detail how social media advertising helps us achieve a representative sample of the community.

The Living in Australia survey was collected from 9 to 28 April 2026 using Informed Decisions' social media advertising approach. Social media advertising is an emerging social research methodology, and we lead the way in using and proving its viability. It is our main data collection method when recruiting within a local government area, because it is the best available way to generate large, diverse samples of residents across small geographic areas. It lets us target a high volume of residents in a local area cost-effectively. More than 80% of Australians are on Facebook or Instagram, and we typically reach over 100,000 users.

Respondents came from 426 distinct local government areas. This study is built for national and place-type analysis, not individual council results, which is what Community Views is for. To get results you could take to a meeting or put in a strategy, you need a sample built for your area, which is what a commissioned Community Views project does, with a sample designed to look and feel like the residents who live there. At the state and territory level, sample sizes varied, and the full breakdown, along with all survey questions, is available on the Living in Australia platform.

We surveyed 5,325 residents in total, giving a maximum margin of error at the 95% confidence interval of plus or minus 1.3%. In simple terms, if 50% of survey respondents place importance on 'reliable and efficient public transport', we can be 95% confident that between 48.7% and 51.3% of the total Australian adult population place importance on it.

On completion, the sample was compared with the population of interest, all Australian residents aged 18 and over, to check whether responses to the demographic and life-stage questions were skewed relative to their actual population share. To account for that, we normalised the survey data using age and local area.

This is a non-probability sample, weighted to correct the composition of age, gender and location. We also want to acknowledge that people who choose to click on a survey about their local area may be more engaged with local issues than average. That is why we position Living in Australia as a consistent benchmark for tracking change and comparing places on a like-for-like basis, rather than as a population estimate. The method is the same every year, so the comparisons are sound even where the absolute levels carry that caveat.

How much does the local economy shape liveability, and where is cost of living biting?

"The impact of local economic activity (tourism, night time economy, events) that contribute to liveability."

Corporate Strategic Planning, Tourism WA

"What do we need to put in place to deliver thriving communities and economic opportunities for our businesses and residents?"

Economic Development, City of Logan

"Interested in learning more about today's perceived livability in Australia and the changes in sentiment and/or the reality of Australian standard of living dropping and cost of living pressures that respondents' express concerns about."

Tourism and Grants, Town of Gawler

"I'm interested in learning how community priorities vary across different regions, particularly around workforce development, education and training opportunities, housing affordability, and how local governments can use place-based evidence to support future planning and community outcomes."

Vocational Pathways, City of Ipswich

Answered by Jacquie Norton, Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

People may not talk about the local economy as a top liveability priority, but they feel its effects every day. How prosperous a place feels is strongly associated with whether residents feel safe. A place that looks active, maintained and economically healthy tends to feel more secure and inviting. When people are comfortable using local streets, shops and public spaces, they are also more likely to spend time locally, support businesses and take part in community life.

That means local prosperity is about more than jobs and economic output. It is also about whether growth and investment are visible in the quality of neighbourhoods, centres and public spaces. A thriving local economy strengthens liveability when residents can see and experience its benefits.

Ipswich shows why that distinction matters. The city is experiencing extraordinary population and economic growth, but Community Views has also identified pressure around housing affordability, congestion and access to services. Affordable housing has become harder for residents to access over time, while road congestion has emerged as one of the city's clearest areas of unmet need. In fast growing communities like Ipswich, the challenge is not simply to generate growth. It is to make sure housing, transport, services and local amenity keep pace, so residents experience that growth as an improvement in their own lives.

Cost of living adds another layer. Across Australia, financial pressure is widespread, but it is not experienced equally. Renters are particularly exposed. They report poorer financial circumstances, greater difficulty keeping up with payments and much stronger concern about housing than people who own their homes outright.

And the pressures change depending on where you live. In metropolitan areas, housing costs are often at the centre of the affordability story. In regional and rural communities, transport and fuel become much more significant, because residents often have fewer alternatives to driving and greater distances to travel for work, healthcare, education and everyday services.

That makes cost of living partly a place issue, not just a household finance issue. The affordability of housing matters, but so does the cost of reaching the things people need. A cheaper home can quickly become less affordable if it comes with long commutes, limited public transport or expensive travel to essential services.

The implication for decision-makers is to look beyond headline economic growth. A strong local economy should ultimately translate into a place where people can afford to live, move around, access services and take part in community life. Community Views helps show whether residents are actually experiencing those benefits, and which groups or parts of a community are missing out.

How do I work my own community's priorities through the platform, step by step?

Asked by Vocational Pathways, City of Ipswich. Answered by Jacquie Norton, Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

Your three topics behave very differently across the country, which is itself the key finding. The value placed on 'good job prospects' is strongly geographic, at 11% of inner-city residents naming it a top-five priority against 32% in small towns, and the gap between what people want and what they get is more than four times wider in small country towns. Education is the opposite pattern. People want it about equally wherever they live, but the experience collapses from 7.4 out of 10 in the inner city to 4.6 in small country towns, so this is a supply gap rather than a difference in priorities. Housing affordability is the true universal, named by 46% to 51% of residents in every settlement type.

The Views platform for Ipswich can answer this question. Start in 'Values and Experiences' and pull Ipswich's importance and experience scores for the three topics you have named, which are Good job prospects, High quality education opportunities, and Affordable decent housing. Then rank them by the gap between what residents value and what they are getting, so you are working from Ipswich's own priority order rather than an assumed one.

Choose your benchmark deliberately for each. Job prospects and education are strongly shaped by place, so compare Ipswich to Metropolitan Australia rather than Queensland, since a state average blending Brisbane with regional Queensland will distort your position.

Use 'Break down by area' to compare your established areas with Ripley and Springfield, and 'Demography and Life-Stage' to split by generation and by length of residence, because in high growth areas the sharpest divides run along those lines rather than across the city.

Finish in 'Concerns and Ideas', where the open text tells you whether 'jobs' means local employment or a better commute to Brisbane, and whether 'education' means high schools, TAFE or university access. That distinction changes the strategy entirely.

Then pair it with your economy.id and profile.id data for the structural side, covering journey to work, qualifications, industry and housing stress, so the community's view and the objective evidence sit side by side in the same business case.

How does the night-time economy and local activity feed into liveability?

Asked by Corporate Strategic Planning, Tourism WA. Answered by Jacquie Norton, Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

While having a prosperous local economy does not rank highly on importance against the other 15 attributes, local economic activity matters a lot. How people feel about their local economy had the biggest effect on how they rate their own financial situation, and it was in the top five for mental health and social wellbeing as well.

Evening activity was also tied to safety, in comments like 'more shops open late so the city feels safe' and 'street lighting so it's safer after dark'. When people feel comfortable using streets, shops and public spaces, they are more likely to spend time locally, support businesses and take part in community life. In turn, active and well used places can feel safer, because there are more people around and a greater sense that the area is cared for.

What do we need in place to deliver thriving communities and economic opportunity?

Asked by Economic Development, City of Logan. Answered by Jacquie Norton, Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

First, you need an understanding of residents' values and experiences, and of the foundations that let both communities and local economies do well. Residents' experiences of housing, transport, safety, education, health services, local amenity, social connection and access to employment all influence whether a place works for the people who live and work there.

Those conditions are interconnected. Affordable housing helps businesses attract and retain workers. Reliable transport connects residents to jobs and education, and customers to businesses. Safe and attractive centres encourage people to spend time locally. Education and training create pathways into employment. Parks, services and community infrastructure contribute to health, wellbeing and workforce participation. A strong local economy therefore depends partly on creating places where people can participate fully in community and economic life.

Understanding what matters most to Logan residents, where needs are being met and where the gaps are, helps identify the barriers and enablers to participation and prosperity. It can also reveal whether those conditions are experienced equally across different places and population groups, which is particularly important in a diverse and growing city where the needs of young people, families, established communities, new residents and different neighbourhoods may vary considerably.

Combined with demographic, economic and forecasting evidence, understanding resident needs helps a council move beyond asking 'what should we provide?' to asking 'what conditions do we need to create for people, businesses and places to thrive?'

Why do outer growth areas record the lowest liveability, and what arrives too late?

"Sorry if I missed something but what are the main reasons outer metro growth areas reported the LOWEST levels of liveability? What do they want? What aren't they getting?"

Presbyterian Church of Australia, asked live

"In Casey growth suburbs (Clyde North) there is a lag in infrastructure being implemented in terms of shops, other amenities, healthcare and recreation, as well as public transport. Car dependency has been reinforced by the time it is implemented."

Research, asked live

"West Gippsland (a peri-urban location) experiencing considerable growth, lacking infrastructure and funding to support this rapid expansion."

Property Valuation, Gippsland Property Valuations

"Managing gentrification, which at one level is a good thing (raised standards in an area) but can leave residents behind. How to bring community along when there is a real split. This is evident in Mount Barker where significant growth area has resulted in a new vs old sentiment."

Strategic Planning, Mount Barker District Council

Answered by Dan Evans, who leads Informed Decisions' Community Views service.

Growth area residents want the same things everyone wants. They just experience less of them. The liveability score is not measuring a different set of values in the outer suburbs. It is measuring a bigger gap between what people rate as important and what they actually experience.

Three things drive that gap, and they are consistent across metropolitan growth areas.

Feeling safe

It is the most foundational contributor to liveability anywhere in the country, and it sits even higher in growth areas, where 74% of residents rate it a top priority. Their experience of it sits at 5.5 out of 10, materially below what residents of the middle and inner suburbs report.

That matters disproportionately, because safety is not one attribute among 16. When people do not feel safe where they live, they participate less, and that has knock-on effects for health, for social connection and for the local economy. The important nuance is that perceptions of safety are shaped far more by the possibility of harm than by actual victimisation rates, which means the response is not only policing. Social connection is one of the strongest drivers of how safe people feel, which is why community infrastructure is a safety investment, not just a lifestyle one.

Transport infrastructure

In places where most workers still commute out, transport is what connects people to opportunity: to jobs, to education, to services, and to the hours they otherwise lose in traffic. Growth area residents rate reliable public transport at 57% importance, making your way to and from services at 40%, and a lack of road congestion at 35%. Road congestion returns an experience score of 4.3, the lowest of anything we measure anywhere, and making your way sits at 5.7. The things that matter most are the things falling shortest.

Social infrastructure

Health services, schools, aquatic centres, sports facilities, libraries, gathering spaces. These are what turn a fast growing collection of new suburbs into a community, and they are consistently the last thing to arrive. Health services rate 42% on importance in growth areas and are among the weaker experiences reported.

The underlying cause is a timing problem rather than a design problem. Population arrives first and infrastructure follows, and in areas growing at three times the state rate, the lag compounds year on year. Wyndham is the clearest illustration, going from just over 85,000 people in 2001 to nearly 348,000 today, still running at about 6% a year against a state average closer to 2%. The roads, trains, hospitals and community spaces simply have not kept pace, and the gap between what residents need to go about their daily lives and what is actually there keeps widening.

I would finish on the optimistic note, because it is the honest one. We have genuinely high levels of liveability in our inner and middle suburbs. Those places were not born that way. They were made that way, over decades, by exactly the kinds of transport and social infrastructure that growth areas are now asking for. That is proof of concept, not coincidence, and there is no reason we cannot achieve the same outcomes in outer suburban areas.

It does not require invention. It requires focus and effort, and putting the investment where we are placing the people. What we should expect to see over the next decade is everyone improving, with the outer suburbs improving fastest. That is what makes this one of the biggest opportunities we have to advance quality of life in Australia, and the evidence tells you precisely where to start.

How do you bring a community along when growth has split it?

Asked by Strategic Planning, Mount Barker District Council. Answered by Jacquie Norton, Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions.

Our survey shows that in growth areas across Australia, long-term residents, meaning people who have lived in their local area for 10 years or more, name overpopulation as a top-three local issue about twice as often as newcomers do. In areas that are not growing, that gap disappears entirely.

More broadly, people who have lived somewhere 10 years or more rate their area lower than recent arrivals on 14 of the 16 things we measure, and that holds even after accounting for age, where they live and whether they own or rent. Newcomers are comparing the place to where they came from. Long-term residents are comparing it to what it used to be.

When we look at what is actually linked to concern about overpopulation, it is the perception of congestion, and a sense that community feeling, safety and green space are poorly experienced locally. On health services, housing and public transport, the residents worried about growth rate their area no differently to those who are not.

So how do you bring a community along when there is a split? The productive question is not 'do you support growth?' It is 'what has to arrive with the growth, and when?' Newcomers and long-term residents tend to have similar values: feeling safe, access to nature, affordable housing, public transport and health services. That gives you clues about how to frame the conversation around similarities rather than differences, and it is worth testing in your own community.

Watch the session on demand

The full Living in Australia 2026 session is available on demand, with the slides and resources, including the place typology analysis and the local area comparisons behind several of the answers above.

You can explore the national and regional results yourself on the Living in Australia platform. If you want results for your own community, at suburb or local area level, that is what Community Views is built for.

Jacquie Norton is a Senior Social Researcher at Informed Decisions. Brigid Quinlan is a Social Researcher. Together they designed and prepared the Living in Australia study. Dan Evans leads Informed Decisions' Community Views service. Informed Decisions has been producing independent population forecasts and local area insight for Australian communities since 1997.