Last night, the Lowy Institute issued extracts of its 2008 poll, to be published today, showing that tackling climate change has dropped from equal first place along with protecting the jobs of Australian workers to equal fifth, when considering the country's most important foreign policy goals.

Two-thirds of Australians now ranked climate change as very important, compared with its previous ranking of 75per cent. Protecting Australian jobs has risen to 79per cent.

Strengthening the Australian economy rose from 60 to 70per cent.

Institute executive director Allan Gyngell said this was the biggest movement in the past year.

''Concern over economic issues has risen at the expense of the environment,'' he said.

People were also seeing global warming as less pressing. The proportion of people who believed it should be tackled now, even if it meant significant costs, dropped from 68 to 60per cent, and those who thought it should be addressed gradually in a low-cost way increased from 24 to 32per cent.

This was backed up in the extra amount Australians were willing to pay on their monthly electricity bills to fix climate change.

Only 19per cent were prepared to pay an extra $21 or more and 20per cent were prepared to pay $11 to $20. Almost a third would pay less than $10 and 21per cent were not prepared to pay anything at all.

The increasing scarcity of water was rated critical by 83per cent of people, although global warming dropped slightly from 68 to 66per cent. Fear of terrorism also dropped, from 73 to 66per cent.

A Greenpeace-commissioned Newspoll found 84per cent of people believed the profits from an emissions trading scheme should be invested in renewable energy instead of paid back to coal-fired power generators.