Newspoll: Lukewarm budget response won’t set off alarms, but it’s early days

The gloss appears to be coming off Anthony Albanese . Picture: Damian Shaw

Labor’s first budget has fallen flat with voters.

The response from the punters has been lukewarm at best.

Confidence in the budget’s ability to deliver any good for the economy is the lowest on record.

And while the number of people who believe it will be bad for the economy isn’t as bad as the assessment of the Coalition’s budget emergency of 2014, it’s still the highest for a while. This is not the ringing endorsement that Jim Chalmers’ was hoping to achieve.

It confirms the view among most voters that the Labor government so far has no answers to the problem.

It has failed the principal political test that when you tell people there is a problem, you better tell them in the same breath that you have a plan to deal with it.

But it hasn’t hurt electorally. Not yet anyway.

Labor’s primary vote is ahead of where it was two months ago and a fair bit higher than its election result.

There has been no brand damage from the budget, or anything else so far.

That said, the gloss appears to be coming off Anthony Albanese a bit. His commanding lead over Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister is still commanding, but significantly down on where it was in September.

No alarm bells yet.

But it is the assessment of the budget that Labor strategists might be a little concerned about, considering times are only going to get tougher for most people.

Cost of living is the only game in town.

And the budget didn’t get the takeoff the government was hoping for.

There are indicators in the voter assessment of the budget that cost of living may rapidly bring forward the end of Albanese’s post-election honeymoon.

It is these prevailing attitudes that starts first, and the vote usually follows.

Peter Dutton on the other hand appears to be setting the Coalition back on a path to political recovery.

His immediate objective as Opposition Leader after a thumping loss was to hold the show together and get the Liberal base back.

There are signs he is doing that, having restored the Coalition’s primary vote to at least where it was at the election, and improving his own personal position.

This is reflected in the falling away of support for minor parties and independents since the election.

The combined vote for the Coalition and Labor is now back up to 73 per cent, which suggests that predictions of an end of the two major parties system may have been premature.

This is another trend to watch over the next six to 12 months.