Newspoll results show surge in support for Bill Shorten and pain for Tony Abbott after Budget
PRIME Minister Tony Abbott is unfazed by bad polls for the government, saying voters will understand the Coalition’s “elemental commitment” to fix the budget.
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PRIME Minister Tony Abbott is unfazed by bad polls for the government, saying voters will understand the Coalition’s “elemental commitment” to fix the budget.
The latest Newspoll published in The Australian shows 69 per cent of respondents think they will be worse off under the measures announced by Treasurer Joe Hockey last week.
Households earning between $50,000 and $90,000 were the most pessimistic.
Labor leader Bill Shorten has also taken an 11-point lead over Mr Abbott as preferred prime minister.
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Anger over Mr Hockey’s Budget measures boiled over on the weekend, with street marches through major cities and a meeting of premiers in Sydney on Sunday vowing to fight $80 billion in school and hospital funding cuts.
Mr Abbott, who visited a medical research facility in Brisbane today, said selling a tough budget was never going to be easy. “This has been a tough budget, but it has also been a visionary budget,” he said of plans for a $20 billion research fund, paid for by a $7 charge for visiting a GP.
Mr Abbott said the Howard coalition government had also taken a hit in the polls after the 1996 Budget, which also included large cuts to public spending.
But voters have branded the Federal Budget the worst in more than 20 years, polls show.
Only 39 per cent said the Budget was for the good of the country, according to the survey.
The Galaxy Poll for News Corp showed Treasurer Joe Hockey’s first Budget left three-quarters of Australians feeling worse off.
The poll revealed only 11 per cent of voters believe they are better off as a result of Mr Hockey’s Budget which will hit families, pensioners, high-income earners and single parents hardest.
“It is a worse result than we have seen in any Howard and Costello budget or Rudd and Swan budget,’’ said Galaxy pollster David Briggs.
The Greens dropped three points to 11 per cent.
Similar sentiments for the government were reflected in a Fairfax-Nielsen poll, with 74 per cent saying they will be worse off and 63 per cent branding the Budget unfair.
The Nielsen poll had the two-party-preferred vote at 56-44 in favour of Labor.
The Australian says the Newspoll is the worst result for any Coalition budget on record, with only 5 per cent of voters saying they will be better off.
But Mr Abbott has shrugged off the disastrous results, saying his job is to do what’s best for the country, not win a popularity contest.
“We never said it was going to be easy,” he told ABC Radio on Monday.
“The last government which brought down a very tough budget — the Howard government in 1996 — took a big hit in the polls too.
“But in the end we were elected not to take easy decisions but to take hard and necessary decisions, and that’s what we’ve done.”
He took up the theme at a press conference later in the morning, describing the 1996 Budget as one that “set us up for a decade of prosperity”.
“I absolutely understand why the premiers are fighting their corner. That’s what they were elected to do. But the premiers understand as I do that we need to fix the federation as we need to fix the Budget.”
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said yesterday that states and territories will cause the “maximum amount of political pain possible” for the Abbott government unless it reverses $80 billion in Budget cuts.
Premiers and chief ministers are demanding an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Tony Abbott, saying billions in cuts to health and education funding will have an immediate impact on services. At a meeting in Sydney on Sunday they rejected the cuts as “completely unacceptable” and claimed hundreds of hospital beds would have to be closed across the country from the beginning of July.
Mr Abbott has so far resisted pressure to reverse the $80 billion in cuts over the next 10 years, and has disputed the states are facing any funding emergency.
Mr Weatherill said state and territory leaders would rally voters against the cuts and the Abbott government.
“Ultimately this becomes an argument about how much pressure the community’s prepared to bring to bear on the Government,” Mr Weatherill said.
“It’s a question of how much political pain the federal Liberal government is prepared to absorb, and we’re prepared to make (change) irresistible.”
But Mr Abbott said the cuts won’t come for three years so the Commonwealth and states have time to develop a new funding model.
“There’s plenty of time to come to grips with this and the best possible ways to deal with it,” he told ABC radio.
“Let’s talk all of this through and come up with a system that come 2017-18 ... we have schools and hospitals which are well funded, which are better run, and let’s have a federation that works better as well.”
NSW Premier Mike Baird predicted NSW would lose $2 billion over the next four years.
Victoria’s Denis Napthine dismissed suggestions the cuts would have no impact until 2017.
“Our advice is that’s simply not accurate and we need to sit down and sort that out,” he said.
Mr Abbott said the government would not rethink the budget, despite the anger of state and territory leaders, the poor polling and opposition in the Senate.
“We have put forward a very carefully thought through, sensible, reasonable, moderate way forward, and we’re just going to push on with it,” he said.
In an interview with Brisbane radio station 4BC, Mr Abbott said states could come to the federal government with propositions like increasing GST or broadening the tax’s base.
“They haven’t come with that but that’s the kind of thing that if they want could be looked at as part of the federation white paper process,” he said.
“I absolutely accept (Queensland Premier) Campbell (Newman)’s point that states have a very heavy responsibility but they don’t have these sorts of funding to meet those responsibilities, that’s why we every so often have episodes of argy bargy.”
The Prime Minister said he had long thought the federation was “dysfunctional” but had always been upfront before the election with state premiers.
Originally published as Newspoll results show surge in support for Bill Shorten and pain for Tony Abbott after Budget
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