Healthy budget could give Morrison the edge

Scott Morrison was correct last week when he told MPs they couldn’t win on the single issue of border protection, and rejected calls he should have brought on an election before the April budget.

Three months ago, the Prime Minister could not have won the election, three weeks ago he couldn’t have won the election, but now he can win an election in three months.

Bill Shorten, with the highest voter dissatisfaction rating since September last year after his border protection blunder, has given him that chance.

Yet, the latest Newspoll shows Labor’s border protection changes are not a John Howard “Tampa moment” of 2001, which gave a big boost to the Coalition.

Morrison was also dead right to use border protection to consolidate the Coalition’s base and use renewed voter attention on national security to talk about economic security. Shorten’s blunder on border protection hasn’t lost him the election but it’s shifted the debate to Coalition strengths and highlighted the potential for Morrison to appeal to One Nation and Labor voters on national security, border protection and economic management.

Between one in four and one in five ALP supporters prefer Morrison’s management of the economy, national security and border protection over the Opposition Leader’s but they haven’t yet changed their intention to vote for Labor. The Coalition has been given the chance to use border protection and national security to attract Labor voters and draw back disaffected conservative voters but it has to offer more, something positive, to get people to change their vote.

Significantly, Morrison got a four-point rise after just talking about the records of Labor and the Liberals, the negatives of ALP policy on investment and the promise of a budget surplus. He hasn’t touched on what may be in the budget for voters.

The latest Newspoll, with no real change in any key figure, leaving the Coalition trailing Labor on an election-losing two-party-preferred basis of 53 to 47 per cent, also demonstrates the danger of relying on one poll result instead of looking at trends.

Nine polling, revealed on television two weeks ago showing a dramatic two-percentage-point rise in primary vote for the Coalition and a four-point drop for the ALP, reflected strong public support for tough border protection.

But the effect of the Nine polling was exaggerated — it was two months since the last poll — and it picked up a lot of negative noise about Labor, resulting in an absurdly low primary vote for the ALP of just 33 per cent.

During the same period, regular Newspoll surveys have recorded a two-point rise in primary vote for the Coalition to 37 per cent and a two-point fall for Labor to 39 per cent. One Nation lost two points and “others” gained two points.

Small as those changes are, they are trends in the Coalition’s favour which give Morrison an opportunity. That’s all it is, but it’s better than it was.