Shorten’s popularity climbs while Abbott’s slumps

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The Sydney Morning Herald

Federal Politics

Political News

Date

December 16, 2013 – 10:57PM

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Mark Kenny

Chief political correspondent

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Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Photo: Andrew Meares

The third major poll in as many weeks has found Tony Abbott’s 100-day-old government has been given no honeymoon by voters and would have been bundled out if an election were held over the weekend.

In a double blow to the Prime Minister, it found the only honeymoon is actually being enjoyed by his direct opponent, Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten.

In fact, Mr Shorten’s personal approval continues to climb with fully two-thirds of voters viewing his performance as either satisfactory (41.5%) good (15.9%) or very good (9.2%).

The ReachTEL/Seven News survey of more than 3500 voters was taken on Sunday afternoon, the eve of the 100-day milestone.

It confirmed the findings of the most recent Fairfax-Nielsen and Newspoll surveys revealing that Mr Shorten’s ALP Opposition already leads by 4 percentage points at 52/48 over the Coalition.

Even on primary votes, Labor is virtually level pegging with the combined Liberal and Nationals parties at 40.4 per cent to the Coalition on 41.4.

At the September 7 election, the Coalition easily trumped Labor, securing 46 per cent of the primary vote compared to Labor’s meagre return of just 33 per cent.

Among the otherwise gloomy news for the Coalition was the finding that half of all voters believe it has done a satisfactory, good, or very good job in its first 100 days.

But on individual performance it’s a different story.

The ReachTEL poll shows the collapse of support for the Coalition Government is being led by dissatisfaction with Mr Abbott’s own performance, with 52.1 per cent of voters marking his prime ministership as either poor, or very poor.

The Government has been stung in its early months by political problems which it has been slow to manage. These have included a series of revelations that MPs had abused travel entitlements to fund their attendances at private social and political events such as weddings and football matches.

The Indonesian spying affair dating back to 2009 has also scuttled the new government’s relationship with Jakarta just at a time when it needed optimum co-operation to achieve its stop-the-boats promise.

But its most grievous problem was the ham-fisted mismanagement of the education portfolio, which saw Mr Abbott first look to break an election commitment on schools funding before thinking better of it and returning to his original election pledge.

Failure to deliver unqualified promises to scrap the mining and carbon taxes, pay down debt, and restore the budget, have also been highlighted by critics.

Most recently, the closure of Holden dominated federal politics, with senior ministers accused of taunting the car-maker’s US owners to withdraw, and of not doing enough to retain the business, before the announcement eventually came.

The poll shows voters were particularly unimpressed with the Government’s handling of that situation, with 45 per cent responding that more could have been done to keep the car-maker operational, and 45 per cent believing more needs to be done for Holden workers.

Among the worrying signs for the economy, around one-third of respondents flagged spending less at the shops this Christmas than they had last year – a sign of low consumer confidence amid a worsening economic picture.