Newspoll’s snapshot of life with civic trust and hope

Our special Newspoll on Tuesday gives Australians a glimpse of themselves at an extraordinary moment in history. It is a time of crisis and uncertainty — and that is creating a sense of social solidarity seen in the high approval levels enjoyed by political leaders across the federation. All premiers were sitting on satisfaction ratings comfortably above 50 per cent last week, from Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk at 59 per cent to Peter Gutwein in Tasmania on a staggering 90 per cent. Scott Morrison also is popular, with an approval level of 60-72 per cent across the states, while 33-44 per cent of those surveyed believe he’s handling the COVID-19 pandemic “very well”. On that same public health challenge, the leaders of the east coast states of NSW, Victoria and Queensland also get the top rating from about a third of respondents, with dramatically higher levels of approval in Western Australia and Tasmania.

What we’re seeing is citizens looking to those in government as crisis managers in the face of an unfolding pandemic with profound social, economic and human costs. It’s not a party-political story. The federation, as is usually the case, has a patchwork of parties in power, but support for leaders is across the board. In Western Australia, Labor’s Mark McGowan is in a remarkably strong position but the Prime Minister is also very popular in that state. Since April, Ms Palaszczuk has improved her standing but she would be unwise to think this will automatically translate to October’s state election, when party politics and a range of issues are likely to reassert themselves somewhat. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has taken quite a knock in the satisfaction stakes, and it’s true his leadership has stumbled. He projects a self-confidence that suits him when things are going well but otherwise shades into arrogance. Even so, there will be Liberal voters in his state whose love of Victoria makes them unembarrassed to support Mr Andrews as crisis-mode Premier.

This kind of unifying spirit is seen on a bigger scale in the national cabinet, at least when common sense prevails, and in the pragmatic working relationship between a Coalition government and the ACTU. All this is a function of threats to the national interest, and incumbency responding to a population in search of sensible leadership and decision-making that works. Just as politicians have proved able to turn down the volume of partisanship, so too the people have been willing to make sacrifices and (mostly) follow directions.

Civic approval for government is no carte blanche, although there is certainly acknowledgment that politicians deserve to be cut some slack because they must guide the nation through rapidly developing hazards with big gaps in knowledge and information. From the smallest state to the federal capital, however, leaders would be wrong to interpret high approval ratings as cause for political vanity. Instead, these results suggest popular trust and an expectation that those in government will carefully deliberate and enact competent policy to safeguard lives and livelihoods. People want their leaders not to play political games and to be as upfront as possible about the rationale for rules that impose social and economic burdens. This Newspoll snapshot captures a serious trial in the life of the nation, and serves as a reminder of the heavy responsibility on the shoulders of those elected to lead.

It’s unusual for Australians to put so much faith in government. We like to regard ourselves as individualists irreverent about politics, even cynical. This is a strand in our national character, although we lack the libertarian spirit of people who have fought revolutionary wars, and our convict past lives on in a sometimes stultifying conformism and nanny state meddling. Even so, it’s a fact many Australians right now look to government to keep them afloat, and some imagine that state patronage and ever more public debt can rescue the country. That tendency has to be resisted. Along with a temporary expansion of government, we will need individual self-reliance and risk-taking if we are to adapt and find new ways to create prosperity and jobs.

Today’s Newspoll also has interesting things to say about identity and belonging. Post-war globalisation threatened to make national identities more similar and bland — often more Americanised — although the excesses of technocratic elites led to a populist and nationalist counter-reaction seen in Donald Trump’s election, the Brexit vote and Bill Shorten’s defeat. Although COVID-19 unites the world in fear, it also makes people hunker down at home, and this is especially true for Australia as an island continent so far spared the worst of the pandemic. Our borders are closed, expats have been coming home, and if we contemplate holidays it’s a chance to discover regions of Australia unfamiliar to us.

If our sense of Australianness has been intensified, so too have our regional identities. Closure of state borders — like Mr Andrews joking about the non-appeal of neighbouring South Australia — play on quite old regional rivalries, such as flare between NSW and Queensland in State of Origin football. This can be seen in Newspoll’s intense premier worship in WA and Tasmania, which have always felt detached from the establishment of the southeast mainland. A related theme is envy, with some Andrews-phobic Victorians wondering aloud about the chance of escaping to NSW as pandemic refugees. COVID has brought an even more intensely local focus, with parents working at home, and socialising more limited to family and neighbours. This is life in a cluster; whether self-reliant and self-contained in mutual goodwill, or unhappily identified as residents of a viral hot spot who must go together back into lockdown. Nobody would wish a pandemic on the world, and we hope our governments rise to the challenge of recovery, but these are also fascinating times in which to be alive.