Most Australian workers believe the nation’s biggest companies have a responsibility to act on climate change, but a new survey has found widespread scepticism that meaningful progress is being made.
The research, conducted by the Curtin Centre for Applied Ethics, surveyed 2,048 workers across Australia. It found employees were willing to support corporate climate action but were “unwilling to take it on trust”.
Professor Anthony Langlois, the centre’s director and Stan Perron Dean of Applied Ethics, said climate change had become a workplace health, safety and productivity issue, with its effects most keenly felt in frontline roles.
Among technicians, trades workers and machinery operators, 59 per cent said they had worked in temperature extremes, while 45 per cent had worked in places affected by smoke, fumes or dust. The corresponding figures for managers and professionals were 25 per cent and 20 per cent.
Frontline workers were also among the most disillusioned with the wider political and social response. Some 58 per cent said they were dissatisfied with the federal government’s response to climate change, while the same proportion felt they had no meaningful say in the political system.
That figure rose to 60 per cent among workers exposed to smoke, fumes or dust.
The survey found the issue workers expected to be affected most by climate change was the cost of living, with 41 per cent identifying it as an area of “major impact”. The report said employees encountered climate change “first as an affordability and security question, not an abstract environmental one”.
Professor Langlois said transparency would be crucial if companies wanted employees to support their climate commitments, particularly in Western Australia’s energy and mining industries.
“People want change, and they’re entirely happy to be persuaded that companies are doing things and that the government is doing things, they just want to see the evidence,” he said.
He said newly introduced mandatory climate reporting requirements offered businesses an opportunity to demonstrate progress, and urged them to involve workers in transition planning rather than relying on public relations campaigns.
“Talk to the whole of your workforce about what you’re doing, not just the boards and the investors, but talk to the people all the way down the hierarchy, and have conversations with workers about transition planning,” he said. “Don’t rely on a PR campaign, use the evidence and that will persuade people.”
Co-author Professor Astghik Mavisakalyan said 79 per cent of employees believed greenwashing was common. Workers were more likely to trust climate claims that had been independently audited or supported by mandatory disclosure requirements than statements based solely on company self-reporting.
The report also identified a growing political divide over climate change. The gap between left- and right-leaning Australians widened from 32 percentage points in 2010 to 48 percentage points in 2025, with perceptions of the threat of global warming shifting sharply among left- and centre-leaning Australians but barely changing among those on the right.
