Newspoll: Budget spending twice as popular as call for debt control
Voters back the big-spending budget agenda as a necessary measure to stimulate the economy.
Voters have backed the government’s big-spending budget agenda as a necessary measure to stimulate the economy, with 60 per cent claiming it was more important than reducing the nation’s record public debt levels.
An exclusive post-budget Newspoll for The Australian also showed a significant majority of voters trusted Scott Morrison over Anthony Albanese to guide Australia’s recovery through the pandemic.
Despite last Tuesday’s budget revealing net debt would approach $1 trillion by the middle of the decade, only 30 per cent of voters believed the government should be doing more to rein in spending and reduce debt.
This was half the number who believed the government was right to stimulate the economy even though it meant increasing the debt burden for future taxpayers.
Coalition voters were most strongly in favour of spending over austerity, with 71 per cent backing increased spending compared to 53 per cent of Labor voters. Only a quarter, 24 per cent, of Coalition voters believed the government should be doing more on budget repair compared to 37 per cent of Labor voters.
Men were also significantly more in favour of spending than women – 64 per cent to 56 per cent – with broad support across all age demographics, younger people being less enthusiastic. This view was strongest among those over 50, with 67 per cent backing a spending agenda.
The Newspoll on Monday revealed that despite the budget being the most well received since the Peter Costello era, this had not translated into an electoral bounce for the Coalition with Labor still leading 51-49 per cent two-party preferred.
It revealed overwhelming support for international borders remaining closed, with 73 per cent backing restrictions until at least mid-2022 or when the global pandemic was under control.
It also suggested that partisan political views had strengthened following a year in which the Coalition and the Prime Minister enjoyed universal support for management of the pandemic.
More than half of all voters, 52 per cent, trusted a Coalition government led by Mr Morrison to guide Australia’s recovery from the pandemic. This was two points down from October, following the delayed 2019-20 budget. Just 33 per cent trusted an Albanese-led Labor government, although this was a one-point improvement.
Labor voters, however, now strongly backed their party and its leader, with 62 per cent claiming they trusted Mr Albanese over 23 per cent for Mr Morrison.
Coalition voters were more solid in support for their party with 89 per cent backing a Morrison government and just 5 per cent claiming to trust Mr Albanese more. Male and female voters were evenly split at 52 and 51 per cent, with only younger voters, aged 18 to 34, slightly more in favour of Mr Albanese.
Asked about the Newspoll, Mr Albanese stuck to tradition and declined to comment on finding that while the Coalition’s primary vote was unchanged at 41 per cent, Labor’s dropped two points to 36 per cent. “I don’t comment on polls. … But I would have thought that if the federal government, which has spent $100bn of additional money last week, remains behind on the polls … questions on it should be directed to the government.”
More Coverage
What should we do about the entitlement culture?
Benefits become part of people’s points of reference, including the middle class, and therefore any reduction in entitlements is deeply politically unpopular. It’s the principal reason governments find it so hard to control spending.
How campus censors fuel the rise of a resurgent anti-Semitism
Hitler learned to hate Jewish people in the lecture halls of Munich University. His racism was not genetically encoded in him. All the evidence suggests that, when Hitler was a youth, the Jews were not on his radar. It was a university that changed all that.