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Feelings of safetyFeelings of safety
About the author
Ryan Neelam
Ryan Neelam was Director of the Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program at the Lowy Institute. He led the flagship annual Lowy Institute Poll, was project director for the Global Diplomacy Index, and wrote about climate diplomacy and multilateral policy.
Australians’ sense of safety, which reached a record high in 2010, was deeply shaken at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and again following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Since then, overall feelings of safety have only partially recovered, with six in ten Australians (62%) in 2024 saying they feel either ‘safe’ or ‘very safe’. This remains steady from last year, but 30 points below the high watermark of 2010 (92%).
It is notable that the proportion of people feeling ‘very safe’ has remained consistently very low since 2020. Today, barely any (5%) say they feel ‘very safe’, as compared to 2010, when four in ten Australians (42%) felt this way.
