Media Release
Friday 2 July 2004

More than a quarter of Australians believe co-operatives are the best providers of banking and insurance services, according to the first Australian Social Attitudes Survey. Twenty-two percent believe them to be the best providers of food retailing.

According to Australian Centre for Co-operative Research and Development (ACCORD) Senior Research Fellow Andrew Passey these are surprisingly high figures given the emphasis placed on the shareholding market economy in Australia.

"People clearly want a choice", Mr Passey says. "Our survey shows that many prefer organisations that are owned by their members, and where members have a greater say in the way their organisation is run, rather than simply being a taxpayer or shareholder."

The next time you buy a litre of milk, a pack of sugar, or even take your car in for repair, the chances are it will be a co-operative and not a stock-holding company that is the supplier and that’s because co-operatives are alive and well in Australia. For example, the fifteen co-operatives in the 2003 Business Review Weekly Top 500 private companies have combined revenue of $7.4 billion.

But co-operatives are not purely economic entities – they have important social impacts too. One in three Australians is, or has been, a member of a co-operative, and the Australian public is broadly supportive of the economic and social work that co-operatives do. The co-operative sector is therefore clearly still active and well regarded, but in this time of the hegemony of the stock-holding corporation is it in its last death throes?

July 3 2004 - International Co-operative Day - seems a good time to try to face up to this question. Using data from the 2003 Australian Social Attitudes Survey the answer seems to be a resounding no. In concrete ways, co-operatives (and mutuals) are seen as viable alternatives to businesses in the provision of a range of services. As well as providing excellent banking, insurance and food retailing services, co-operatives are seen positively as providers of community services such as child and aged care - sectors that have long been the domain of government.

The findings are supported by broader attitudes to co-operatives in Australia, which reveal that these kinds of organisation are seen by the public to embody important values. Almost 72% of Australians agree that co-operatives show people can still work together, and 65% feel that co-operatives do good work.

One way they do good work is evident from the survey findings, with six in ten respondents agreeing that co-operatives help make the market place fairer. This last finding is revealing – it suggests that co-operatives might be a solution to broadly reported concerns about the economic insecurities and sense of powerlessness associated with being a citizen of a market economy.

What then about the social impacts of co-operatives? As member owned and democratically run organisations based on principles of mutualism, they have a number of relational as well as material outcomes.

"Ask members of co-operatives if they think people can be trusted and 49% will say yes (compared with only 42% of all Australians and 38% of non-members). If you ask them about political trust, 10% more co-operative members will have confidence in Federal parliament than Australians at large," Mr Passey says.

"Perhaps unsurprisingly, co-operative members are more likely to favour co-operative service providers than non-members, partly since they know such options exist, and because they have direct (and positive) experiences of their activities".

But, it seems there is support for the mutual form of organisation across the population, despite the high profile flotation of mutual organisations such as the AMP and NRMA Insurance. When asked if they agreed or disagreed that changing ownership from members to shareholders was a mistake for these organisations, almost half (49%) agreed it had been a mistake. In contrast, only 19% disagreed.

Interestingly, this is despite the windfalls that many have received on the back of privatisations, and the alleged benefits to individuals as the newly fledged customers of such organisations. Maybe then, the sun has yet to set on the day of co-operative and mutual organisations in Australia?

Further Information:
Suzanne Henderson, Communications Manager, ACCORD
Ph 0407 104 268 Email: suzanne.henderson@uts.edu.au

N.B: About the Survey
The 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) is the first of a new series of biennial surveys managed by the ACSPRI Centre for Social Research (ACSR) in the Research School of Social Sciences at the ANU. Developed with the co-operation of social scientists around Australia, AuSSA provides authoritative data on the social attitudes and behaviour of Australians.

ACCORD placed a set of 27 questions on the 2003 AuSSA, which asked respondents about their attitudes to co-operatives and their membership of associations. The data reported in this article are drawn from this set of questions.