2026 National Community Engagement Barometer
Survey results are LIVE!
Day(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
Welcome to the 2026 Community Engagement Barometer results, where we ask over 1,500 Australians what matters most.
Conducted by an independent research partner, the Community Engagement Baraometer surveys a representative sample of Australian’s about what they like, don’t like and trust about community engagegment.
Community engagement lies at the heart of thriving democracies. It is founded on the idea that everyone has the right to be engaged on decisions that affect them.
Its success is that its core principle, the fundamental right to be engaged, is almost universally accepted across a broad range of public policy areas and projects. The challenge is to live up to the promise inherent in that principle: that engagement will be inclusive, accessible, authentic and influential. In short, engagement that matters.
Articulous began this community engagement research in 2024 to find out how successfully real-world engagement is meeting that promise. What we have found across those three years is a clear desire from across the community to be involved and be heard. But we have also seen consistent evidence of engagement failing to fully convince many who have shown up that their input made a genuine difference.
Our hope is that the findings in this report can serve as the spark for some much-needed discussions on how we can deliver more of the engagement our communities expect and deserve.
