The majority of voters in key marginal electorates want the federal government to take a more compassionate approach to asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat, new polling has found.



ReachTel surveyed voters in South Australia, where a Senate battle is expected at the next election, and voters in the rural Victorian seat of Indi and the regional New South Wales seat of New England.

The polling, commissioned by the Australia Institute, asked respondents how they would like to see asylum seekers who arrive in Australia managed.

In all jurisdictions, the majority of respondents said they would like people who are assessed as refugees to be resettled in Australia.

In South Australia, 58% said they wanted refugees resettled in Australia, compared with just over a quarter – or 26% – saying all boat arrivals should be sent to offshore detention centres, which is the existing policy for both Labor and the Coalition. Just over one in 10 respondents – or 11.5% – want all asylum seekers to remain in Australia.

In New England, 59% of respondents want refugees resettled in Australia, compared to 31% who support offshore processing and resettlement. Only 5% want all asylum seekers to be allowed to stay in Australia.

The voters of Indi are the least likely of the surveyed respondents to support offshore processing and resettlement, with just one in five – or 21% – backing the policy. By contrast, 63% of voters want refugees to be allowed to resettle in Australia, and 10% want all asylum seekers to be allowed to stay.

The independent MP for Indi, Cathy McGowan, said the results did not surprise her.

“There’s a very strong sense that children shouldn’t be in detention,” she told Guardian Australia. “Compassion is very strong in this electorate.”

McGowan said she was often asked by members of the electorate how she voted on asylum seeker issues, which she says are separate from concerns over border security.

“Rural Australia has always had a warm heart for people,” she said.

McGowan holds the seat on a wafer thin majority of just 0.3%, and will face a battle from Liberal party stalwart Sophie Mirabella – who McGowan unseated in the 2013 poll – in the upcoming federal election.

But McGowan insists that on the matter of asylum seekers, the Coalition will not “win the hearts and minds” of voters in Indi.

“Despite a political perception that current refugee policies are popular, this poll shows that most Australians reject the idea that the government should lock up and never resettle asylum seekers who arrive by boat,” the executive director of the Australia Institute, Ben Oquist, said.

“The poll indicates the public does not support the current policy setting of sending all boat arrivals to offshore centres and demonstrates a depth of compassion in the Australian community for people who are fleeing persecution and hardship.”



Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, who faces a challenge by former long-time MP Tony Windsor in his seat of New England, has spoken publicly of the need to resettle more refugees from Syria.

“We are doing our part in Tamworth and I’ve been part of those meetings to help the resettlement of refugees from Syrian crisis,” he told reporters. “To be quite frank, it is something I’m very passionate about.”



The Greens oppose the offshore processing and resettlement of asylum seekers, but face a challenge to retain Senate seats in South Australia, as support for Nick Xenophon’s party gathers steam.

The polling was conducted by ReachTel on 10 March, and gathered responses from 1,077 South Australians, 656 residents of Indi and 662 residents of New England.