Kaleisha Ivory is used to having to make hard decisions, but at the centre of every one is her daughter, Lillie.
The single mum from north-west Tasmania has moved 24 times in about two years, and had to give up her much-loved job in the community sector because of her struggle to find stable accommodation.
When fuel went up it was "terrifying", and every trip to the supermarket is a balancing act.
"So it's conditioner or shampoo and grapes or milk, or $10 to $20 in the car to take [Lillie] somewhere nice," Ms Ivory said.
"Every decision comes with some sort of sacrifice. My daughter never goes without, [but] unfortunately, I've had to go without a lot of my small pleasures, but that just comes with being a parent."
Ms Ivory — who plans to vote for the Jacqui Lambie Network on polling day — said there wasn't enough focus from the major political parties on families like her own.
"If you can't empathise with us, at least try to support the services that do," she said.
New data from Vote Compass shows Ms Ivory is not alone in struggling to keep up with the cost of living.
Polling shows 45 per cent of Australians are more worried about their ability to make ends meet now than they were a year ago.
Fifteen per cent said they were less worried, and 39 per cent said they felt about the same about their ability to make ends meet.
Women were more likely than men to say they were concerned, with 52 per cent of women saying they were more worried about making ends meet compared to 38 per cent of men.
Concerns were greatest among Australians earning less than $1,000 a week (57 per cent), then people on $1,000 to $2,500 a week (44 per cent), while those earning more than $2,500 a week were most likely to say they were in about the same position as they were last year (46 per cent).
Younger Australians were more likely to be concerned about making ends meet than older Australians but there's worry across all age groups.
University of Sydney politics lecturer Peter Chen said political parties could campaign harder on cost-of-living issues.
"The election kicked off with a budget that framed itself in terms of cost of living and it had some aspects of it that provided immediate financial relief in some way, but of course that comes back onto people later on," Dr Chen said.
"I don't think it has been discussed as much as it possibly could or should be."
Companies paying back COVID support
Vote Compass also asked whether companies that increased their revenues during the pandemic should have to pay back any COVID-19 support they received from the government.
The majority of people said they agreed that money should be paid back (78 per cent), while only 12 per cent said they disagreed.
Labor voters were most likely to want money returned to the government (84 per cent), followed by people voting for independents or other parties (80 per cent), Greens voters (76 per cent) and Liberal-National Party voters (68 per cent).
The proposition that profitable companies should have to pay back government subsidies was particularly popular among Australians aged 65 and older, 91 per cent of whom agreed the money should be paid back, then 50 to 64-year-olds and 40 to 49-year-olds.
Dr Chen said it was a "commonsense" result.
"The only worthwhile thing to note is there's a very strong analogy we could make with the Rudd government expenditure during the global financial crisis when they spent a lot of money very quickly for very solid macroeconomic reasons knowing there would be wastage, misallocations and problems in that, but in one sense the misallocations were one thing they would accept for an intervention to prevent the economy going into recession," Dr Chen said.
"I would say the Morrison government has exactly the same dilemma.
"You want it done quick, cheap and well, you get two out of three. In this area, they wanted to intervene quickly."
About the data
- Vote Compass responses have been weighted by gender, age, education, language, religion, place of residence and past vote to match the Australian population, creating a nationally representative sample
- The sample size for this report is 85,061 respondents
- Find out more about the methodology in this explainer
