Majority acceptance of vaccination and mandates across the political spectrum in Australia

Abstract

The Australian government has recently introduced some of the strictest vaccination mandates in the world. In light of international studies warning that public opposition to vaccination mandates could undermine public consensus about the value of vaccination, we conduct an original study of more than 1000 Australians on attitudes towards both vaccination and mandates. We find that, in contrast to similar studies in the United States and the United Kingdom, support for both vaccination and mandates is very high, with no significant opposition from any political subgroup. Apart from attitudes towards vaccination itself, there appears to be no separate attitudinal dimension that generates political opposition to vaccination mandates in Australia. This shows the importance of national political context in debates about vaccination policy.