If the people understand what is happening why can't politicians lead with plans for reducing emissions with this public support. The answer must be that big money is paying the politicians bills and the carbon and mining companies want to keep on making money and to hell with the future.

Please refer to the comments already posted on the "Conversation" article entitled : "Australians & climate change------beliefs about public belief may be quite wrong."
Firstly, what questions were asked to ascertain the results you obtained ? Why are none shown to illustrate your point & show how unbiased is the ( your ) conclusion ?
Secondly , what has "belief" got to do with science ?
Thirdly, as the climate is ALWAYS changing , your figure of 74 % is somewhat below what most rational people would expect.
Fourthly, "90%...... accepted SOME LEVEL of human causality"........Again , why wasn't the figure closer to 95% if 5% thought it was caused by entirely natural processes ? SOME LEVEL could amount to as little as "a sneaking suspicion " that human actions were contributing to climate change but MOST of those would surely have understood that climate change was occuring BEFORE human beings evolved .(As surely you would have informed them to collect an unbiased sample !!??)
Fifthly, you say "the sceptics make a minority group.......disbelievers" ...............Again , since when is "belief" a necessary criterion for having an understanding of a scientific fact ?
I put it to you that this article is a load unscientific verbiage attempting to justify an already arrived at assumption and that it lacks proof or integrity and further; that if you had the proof to back up your article then you should have presented it instead of "going off half cocked" & clouding an already murky subject.