Poll has a message for both sides

NEWSPOLL contains a cautionary message for both Julia Gillard and Campbell Newman.

If the Queensland Premier is the hope of the side for a federal Labor Party that's desperate to serve him up as the appetiser for the lean cuisine of Tony Abbott in government, then it is clear the voters aren't buying it. Yet.

Despite his best efforts to turn people off by equating sacked public servants to dog droppings, or the Queensland economy to the trainwreck of Spain's, the electorate has retained the faith it invested in Newman at the March 24 election.

It demonstrates, once again, the noise emitted by sectional interests such as the union-led protests against the public sector cuts does not necessarily resonate with the silent majority. Newman won a mandate to shake up Queensland, and voters are backing him.

The danger for the ALP is that it will hypnotise itself into believing that Newman, and by extension the conservative brethren of Barry O'Farrell in NSW and Victoria's Ted Baillieu, are courting a level of unpopularity at the state level that will help save the Gillard government.

Newspoll explodes that notion in Queensland. Not once over the past three months, as public servants in their thousands took to the streets to decry the thinning of their ranks and everyone from doctors to bush firefighters were wringing their hands over budget cuts, did Newman take a meaningful hit to his personal numbers.

He is as popular as he was the day he led the LNP to a historic victory six months ago.

Could it be the voters are giving Newman credit - and a degree of latitude - for pretty much doing what he said he would?

True, there was no mention at the time that the state employed up to 20,000 more public servants than it could afford. But Newman honoured promises to freeze car registration fees and the main household electricity tariff, and to restore a stamp duty concession that saves thousands on the cost of buying an established home.

The electorate is giving him the benefit of the doubt when he asserts that a smaller government workforce does not necessarily translate to reduced services. Trust is priceless to a politician, but once squandered no amount can really buy it back. Just ask Julia Gillard.