The latest fortnightly Essential poll suggests voters won’t be giving the new government much breathing space before holding it responsible for rising inflation.
Still no sign of Newspoll, despite today’s resumption of parliament, nor of voting intention from the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll. As reported by The Guardian, the latter turns out to be the most discouraging set of numbers for the Albanese government so far, in that 40% were already prepared to rate the government as doing a poor job on relieving cost of living pressures, compared with 23% for good and 37% for neither. Apart from that, all the unusually spare report from The Guardian has to tell us is that “a majority of respondents believe the Albanese government can influence the direction of inflation and interest rates”, which seems unlikely to bode well. The poll was conducted from a sample of 1082, presumably from Thursday to Monday – the full report should be on the pollster’s website later today.
UPDATE: While “neither good nor poor” responses are high in each case, the poll also finds the government rated good on the pandemic by 36% and poor by 25%; good on education by 35% and poor by 18%; and good on climate change by 33% and poor by 21%. Forty-four per cent supported the government’s carbon emissions target while 40% said it did not go far enough, but no option was provided for those who felt it went too far. Fifty per cent said the Greens should support the government, with a question that emphasised Labor had been elected on that basis, while 25% said they should only do so if Labor agreed to changes consistent with its own policies.
Also of note:
• Latika Bourke of the Age/Herald reports that Liberals Andrew Hastie and Simon Birmingham are looking at the example followed by David Cameron after the Conservatives’ 2005 election defeat to improve diversity in the party’s parliamentary ranks, which involved producing a leadership-backed “A-list” of diverse candidates and encouraging local party associations (which lack a clear equivalent in Australian party structures) to choose candidates through primaries open to non-members.
• The Australian Electoral Commission has deregistered the Liberal Democrats, belatedly giving effect to legislation passed last year that effectively prohibited minor parties from having the words Liberal or Labor in their names. The party was cleverly able to keep the existing name at the May election after withdrawing its application to change its name to the Liberty Democrats (officially the Liberty and Democracy Party) in late March, which compelled the AEC to initiate a lengthy deregistration process that has only now come to fruition.
• Two days after a Daily Telegraph report suggesting he has designs on Marise Payne’s Senate seat should she soon vacate it, the Milton Ulladulla Times reports Andrew Constance plans to run again in Gilmore at the next federal election, after falling 373 votes short of taking the seat from Labor’s Fiona Phillips in May.
William Bowe
Source: https://www.pollbludger.net/2022/07/26/essential-research-cost-of-living-open-thread/
