How low can you go?

GILLARD and the Labor brand are plumbing new depths.

Julia Gillard

CAN Julia Gillard salvage Labor's political fortunes? Or are the Prime Minister's poor personal ratings according to Newspoll -- side-by-side record low party figures -- an indication that the government is heading towards certain defeat at the next election?

If Gillard is searching for solace, she should take the opportunity during a break at the Pacific Islands Forum she is attending this week to trawl through Newspoll's historical data on the internet.

It reveals that despite her new lows in the popularity sakes, Paul Keating in 1993 was even less popular with the public but went on to survive 2 1/2 more years as prime minister.

The relief, however, would be brief. After those 2 1/2 years were up, in March 1996 Keating led Labor to one of its worst election defeats in the party's history. Of the 148 seats Labor contested for the House of Representatives, it won just 49. Only Gough Whitlam was dealt a heftier blow by the electorate.

Gillard may take solace from Keating's survival instincts between 1993 and 1996, but MPs on margins of less than 10 per cent in the present parliament probably won't.

Gillard's satisfaction rating as Prime Minister is a lowly 23 per cent: fewer than one in four voters approve of her performance. Dissatisfaction with her performance has risen to 68 per cent.

It's hard to escape the notion that her slide in the polls has been caused by the carbon tax backflip, symbolising perhaps the sense of illegitimacy from which she suffers: partly because of the minority status of the government, partly because of the way she assumed the job in the first place.

Tony Abbott and his parliamentary colleagues have reminded voters every day that Gillard was part of a coup to remove a democratically elected prime minister before the public had its chance to have its say.

In August and September 1993, Keating's satisfaction ratings were just 17 per cent and 18 per cent respectively, so Gillard has a way to go before she is officially Australia's most unpopular PM, according to the polls.

Keating's dissatisfaction ratings rose to highs of 74 per cent and 75 per cent. He managed to recover, at one point almost reaching parity during the height of Alexander Downer's bumbling stint as opposition leader.

In September 1994, Keating's satisfaction rating hit 43 per cent; his dissatisfaction rating was 46 per cent. But he did not recover enough to save his government.

The Coalition replaced Downer with John Howard and Keating's numbers quickly fell away. By the time of the 1996 election he had a dissatisfaction rating nudging 60 per cent.

Importantly, the Keating Labor government never suffered from primary and two-party numbers as low as Labor's are under Gillard. The latest Newspoll has Labor's primary vote at a historic low of just 27 per cent, a depth to which it has plunged in each of the past two months. Even when Keating's personal satisfaction numbers hit the teens the Labor Party's primary vote never dropped below 31.

Gillard supporters use the low primary vote to argue changing leaders isn't the answer for the government to improve its fortunes. They say that, on the contrary, changing leaders now would cause the federal arm of the Labor Party to emulate NSW Labor, which after replacing consecutive premiers saw the primary vote dip into the low 20s.

Howard faced his fair share of tough times during his nearly 12 years as prime minister, in particular from 1998 to 2001. He managed to recover from a low point in June 1998 with satisfaction numbers of 28 per cent and a dissatisfaction rating of 59 per cent. He won an election four months later with less than 49 per cent of the two-party vote by holding on to key marginal seats such as Lindsay and Parramatta in his home state, NSW. In March 2001 Howard was again in trouble, according to his personal satisfaction ratings. Again his satisfaction rating was just 28 per cent, but this time his dissatisfaction rating had risen to 64 per cent. His March 2001 numbers weren't quite as disastrous as Gillard's are, but he recovered on the back of a popular budget, his response to the arrival of the MV Tampa in August that year, and the boon for incumbents in a frightened conservative electorate caused by the terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

By the time of the election campaign in late 2001, more than half of the electorate were satisfied with the job their PM was doing and only 34 per cent were dissatisfied. Howard won the November 2001 election with an increased majority and a 3 per cent swing on the primary vote.

But before Gillard supporters use the example of Howard's recovery as a benchmark for an unpopular prime minister being able to recover from poor personal ratings to win consecutive elections, they would do well also to consider the primary votes for the parties during Howard's low versus today.

Just as Labor's primary vote under Keating managed to hold up in the 30s in even the darkest days, during the two low points for Howard, in June 1998 and March 2001, the Coalition's primary vote was 34 per cent and 35 per cent respectively -- recovering significantly by the time of each election.

While Keating rather than Gillard holds the mantle for being the most unpopular prime minister in our national history, according to Newspoll, and Howard's personal ratings weren't much better than Gillard's are now, the governments they led never suffered party votes as low as Labor faces under Gillard's leadership.

It is the combination of an unpopular PM who has broken an election commitment presiding over record low primary support for the party that worries some Labor MPs. And while Gillard has spruiked in caucus that recovery in the polls can be expected later this year as legislation is bedded down, so far the list of problems for the government (the latest being the High Court rejection of the Malaysian deal) is growing more rapidly than solutions.

Keating's leadership was not on the line in late 1993 because he had engineered an election victory out of nowhere to defeat John Hewson and his Fightback package. That come-from-behind victory was one of the reasons his caucus colleagues stuck with him during the intervening years leading up to the 1996 electoral thrashing. Hope sprang eternal that a recovery was again possible.

Equally, Howard was safe leading up to the 1998 election because his only leadership rival -- Peter Costello -- had his political fortunes as wrapped up in the GST he was selling as the prime minister. When Howard did come under leadership pressure following the narrow 1998 election victory, his canny political skills kept the treasurer at bay, helped along by the deal that never eventuated which promised a leadership handover after the 2001 election.

Gillard may be less secure now because, unlike Keating and Howard, she has not delivered an unlikely election victory. However much her supporters claim the party was lurching towards defeat last year under Kevin Rudd's leadership, winning as a minority government took the gloss off victory.

Her legitimacy as prime minister suffers because Gillard formed a minority government after the election last year only with the help of the Greens and independents. And the tactical concessions necessary to win that support -- an alliance with the Greens, poker machine reforms for Andrew Wilkie and funding for regional areas to keep the rural independents happy -- now make governing with authority difficult.

It may have been a case of tactical concessions costing Labor (and Gillard) the strategic authority necessary to rebuild after a close election result.

A senior Labor strategist says that in hindsight NSW Labor would have been better placed now had it lost in 2007. It would have avoided the descent into the absurd during the following four years. Given the problems federal Labor has had since last year's election, the same phenomenon may be eventuating, whatever happens with the leadership.

While Rudd's popularity slid considerably in the polls before he was removed by Gillard, the new Labor government would kill for the popularity ratings (or less unpopularity) enjoyed by Rudd and the Labor Party in the dying days of his leadership. By June last year Newspoll had Rudd's satisfaction rating at just 36 per cent, while his dissatisfaction was up at 55 per cent. That was a net satisfaction rating -- the number of voters satisfied with the prime minister's performance minus those who are dissatisfied -- of minus 19, hardly good. But it compares with Gillard's latest net satisfaction rating of minus 45.

And while Labor's primary vote under Rudd in June last year was just 35 per cent, that's a full eight percentage points higher than it is now, and it translated into a two-party vote of more than 50 per cent for Rudd, whereas the latest Newspoll put Labor's two-party vote on just 41 per cent.

In fact, throughout the six months leading up to Rudd's removal last year, Labor's two-party vote fell below 50 per cent only once, in early May. That contrasts sharply with Labor under Gillard where its two-party vote has surpassed the Coalition's only once this year, and that was narrowly by 51 per cent to 49 per cent back in March before the carbon tax backflip was announced and Labor's support fell away.

If the numbers never lie, the truth coming out of Newspoll this week, indeed in recent months, is that Gillard and the Labor brand are in equal measure on the nose. What Labor's hardheads therefore need to work out is whether that is reparable under the present leadership arrangements or requires change at the top. Or does a change in leadership exacerbate existing problems?

Making recovery more difficult for the government than was the case for Keating (who never recovered) and Howard (who managed to increase the Coalition vote at the 2001 and 2004 elections) is the constant reminder Newspoll provides for leaders and parties failing to win over the public. Where once the polling would surface as a reminder of how badly the government and the prime minister were travelling only once every few months, today it is published every fortnight. And there are a growing number of competing polling agencies also serving to reinforce in voters' minds their desire to change the government.

That is what political strategists describe -- in sailing parlance -- as struggling for clean air.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia.