The accepted wisdom in the Coalition seems to be that the only things on voters's minds at this state election are bread and butter issues like the cost of living and infrastructure. Yet a poll published by the Herald this week says different.

It turns out that 58 per cent of voters will consider policies on environment and climate change when they head to the polls on March 23. When asked for the most important issue in the election in the Ucomms/ReachTEL poll, 15 per cent of voters said it was the environment. That was a higher score than any issue except ability to manage the state's finances.

Most politicians on the Coalition side, however, are apparently missing this trend. At her campaign launch on the weekend, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said NSW people "should have it all" but that promise did not appear to cover having a clean environment. She brought up the Coalition's flagship green pledge, cheap loans to households to install solar panels, but she couched it as an efficiency measure to cut power bills, only mentioning climate change as an after thought.

Gladys Berejiklian is barely mentioning the environment. Credit:AAP

Perhaps Ms Berejiklian is calculating that the environment is an inner-city trendy issue while the election will be decided in the bush and outer Sydney. The Coalition is certainly hoping to hold country seats such as Lismore, Upper Hunter and Barwon to ensure it retains majority government.