Asking how long it takes the earth to travel around the Sun is one of those questions that often tests people's immediate question parsing abilities rather than their actual knowledge. it's quite easy to assume it's asking something else and immediately answer wrong. That doesn't mean they don't know the answer, just that they answered the wrong question.
As an Australian, this is depressing but not all that much of a surprise. However, this general lack of science knowledge may help to explain some of the fairly ignorant but successful politics which has been happening around climate change here.