Voters not happy to pay price for carbon tax
* Christopher Pearson
* From: The Australian
8 April 2011
TUESDAY's Newspoll gave Labor its lowest two-party preferred vote since
April 2003, when Kim Beazley declared himself a leadership contender when
Simon Crean was in the doldrums.
That result was in sharp contrast to the Newspoll a fortnight earlier, which
had given Labor a two-party lead of two points for the first time in months,
and the Newspoll a month before which had shown Labor at record lows on a
number of measures.
This raised in some observers' minds the question of whether one or more of
those results had been an outlier or rogue poll, beyond the usual margin of
sampling error. Could it be that the early spring in Tony Abbott's step and
also, perhaps, the glint of vindication in Julia Gillard's eye might both
have been unwarranted?
The first thing to note is that the past month has been a turbulent period
in domestic politics and other Australian pollsters have picked up unusual
levels of volatility in people's voting intentions.
In the House of Representatives, question time was more than ordinarily
gladiatorial and rancorous. As well, the long-awaited judgment day for the
Keneally government was a defeat without precedent that clearly affected
federal Labor's support.
Even so, within that month Labor's primary vote went from 30 to 36 points
and then back to 32, while its two-party preferred vote went from 46 to 51
and then down to 45 points. Can unusual levels of voter volatility explain
turnarounds of 6 points in a fortnight?
The most plausible explanation on offer is what's called the September 11
effect. The argument is that when external shocks shift people's attention
off the politics of the day, it tends to boost the stocks of incumbent
governments. The Japanese tsunami, with its terrible loss of life, was such
a shock. The exaggerated prospect of nuclear reactors in meltdown compounded
it. Then again there was the footage of the war in Libya and the agonising
wait for international agreement on a no-fly zone.
Another factor worth mentioning is that the Greens are at last beginning to
attract media scrutiny commensurate with their impending balance-of-power in
the Senate, and as a result they've not been able to consolidate a growth
trend in recent months. In the first Newspoll under discussion it was at a
record 15 points, presumably mostly at the expense of Labor's primary vote.
A fortnight later, thanks in part to external shocks, it fell back to a more
normal level of 12 points, in line with its 11.8 share at the federal
election. That's where it stayed in last weekend's Newspoll, which explains
why Labor's two-party preferred vote was at a record low of 45 points, one
point lower than it had been a month before.
From the Coalition's perspective, the headline figure is the 10 point
two-party preferred lead and the recovery of its primary vote. Opposition
leaders generally lag prime ministers but it's worth noting that the gap
between Abbott and Gillard as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 20
points in early December to nine last weekend.
For Labor, its share of the primary vote since December has always been
lower than the 38 points it managed at the last election, and the trend is
downward. The same is true for its two-party preferred vote, with the
exception of the poll influenced by external shocks. Even the pollyannas in
the party admit that, if Gillard is going to reverse the trend, it will take
a long time.
Her NSW colleagues were inclined to blame the swings against them on her
decision to announce the carbon tax in time for Abbott and Barry O'Farrell
to turn the election into a mini-referendum on the proposal. No doubt the
tax played a part and fed into the concern over cost-of-living pressures,
but it's not possible at this stage to disaggregate it from the other
negatives in play.
However, a poll taken on the last weekend in March for the Australian
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which was released mid-week, helps fill
out the picture. The ACCI poll found 59 per cent of those surveyed were
opposed to the carbon tax and 29 per cent supported it. Only 26 per cent
thought the tax would help cut global carbon emissions and 55 per cent said
it wouldn't make a difference.
Some 73 per cent of respondents believed a carbon tax would have a negative
effect on their cost of living. On the question of the tax's effect on
employment, 65 per cent said they did not believe any job losses were
acceptable and 32 per cent said a small number of job losses was acceptable.
The most suggestive figures here are the solid majorities who are opposed to
the tax, who doubt it would make any difference and who are opposed to
exporting jobs. It would take more conviction on the subject of
anthropogenic global warming than anyone in the political class believes
Gillard can muster to turn those numbers around. They're all of a piece with
the widespread sentiment that even where a majority of people think
something should be done about climate change, they're not prepared to part
with their own money to help pay for it.
What would worry the likes of Climate Change Minister Greg Combet is not
just that the sceptical trend is consolidating and that economic
self-interest is such a consideration in people's thinking. It's that a
concern for the national interest and jobs is emerging as moral underpinning
of the opposition to a carbon tax, in a debate where the global warming
activists have previously assumed - and widely been conceded - the moral
high ground.
On the subject of moral high ground, let me turn by way of a coda to the
lowest note of Gillard's Gough Whitlam Oration. "The Greens will never
embrace Labor's delight at sharing the values of everyday Australians, in
our cities, suburbs, towns and bush, who day after day do the right thing,
leading purposeful, dignified lives, driven by love of family and nation."
What, I wondered at first, if anything, did this slop mean and could her
speechwriter, my old friend and sparring partner, Michael Cooney, really
have been responsible for it? The speech's opening cadences and the allusion
to Walt Whitman were clearly his work.
When her office let it be known that she'd been closely involved in the
writing of the text, it became clear the offending sentence must have been
her own work. Cooney avoids hyperbole (as well as knowing how it's
pronounced). What's more, while he's of the old-fashioned Catholic Right,
he's not given to homophobia and when boiled down this was a pointed
comparison between the Greens and ordinary people driven by love of family.
No wonder Bob Brown was ropeable.
[Addendum ..Spain is running 19% unemployment thanks to "green jobs". We
fret over 7+ .. which is bad enough.]
