Essential poll: budget bump off low expectations but still just one-third think it's good for them
Voters have a more favourable view of the Morrison government’s budget now the detail has been revealed, but people are still more likely to think the measures benefit business and people on higher incomes rather than them personally, according to a snapshot of sentiment in the Guardian Essential poll.
Comparing before and after results, 53% of the poll sample predicted the budget would be good for big business just days before the key measures were unveiled on 6 October, and 55% of a national sample of 978 people in a survey taken afterwards thought business was indeed a significant beneficiary.
Similarly, 51% of the sample had the view pre-budget that the measures would be good for the well off, and that rose to 55% of the sample post-budget.
Individual expectations were very low before the budget was unveiled a week ago, with only 25% of the sample predicting the measures would be good for them personally, despite sustained advance publicity about the high likelihood of income tax cuts. That percentage increased to 31% in the latest, postbudget snapshot.
Voter sentiment also nudged in a positive direction about the economic statement’s impact on families (34% positive pre-budget and 43% post-budget), average working people (30% pre-budget and 43% post-budget), younger Australians (29% pre-budget and 47% post-budget).
The snapshot comes as the shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, prepares to use an outing at the National Press Club to characterise the 6 October measures as uninspired, unimaginative and “unworthy of the moment and the challenge before us and unworthy of all those Australians who’ve carried us through this crisis”.
According to extracts of the speech circulated to journalists in advance, Chalmers will say the Australian economy was underperforming prior to the pandemic and the government failed to deliver a transformative strategy.
“For all the saturation talk we hear of unprecedented times, the truth is the problems gripping our economy existed long before Covid arrived – and the solutions need to endure long after it’s gone,” Chalmers will say.
“That’s the transformative opportunity in front of us. That’s what we need to salvage from the hardship of this moment – the chance to convert this crisis into a turning point for Australia – to go beyond recovering and rearranging what we’ve lost and instead reimagine and renew an Australia stronger and fairer and more secure for more of our people than it was before.”
Chalmers will say Australia is at risk of losing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to “dig deep, to do something meaningful and lasting – not just accumulating a lifetime of new debt to finance a return to the inertia, inequality and insecurity of the past”.
Noting the record debt and deficit confirmed in the budget papers, Chalmers will acknowledge that borrowing is unavoidable in the depths of a recession “but we should not be borrowing to build nothing, change nothing, fix nothing”.
He will say if Labor was in power, the fiscal strategy would be “anchored around a more ambitious approach to employment, to chart a path back to full employment in a way that starts to tackle insecure work and chronic underemployment”.
The shadow treasurer will say debt could be deployed more effectively to kickstart the recovery and create jobs, “to boost demand now, and put in place policies that lift the speed limit on growth, to make it stronger, more inclusive and more sustainable”.
Parliament is not sitting this week and the prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, are both travelling to sell the budget and the alternative policies outline in the budget reply. With a state election due at the end of the month the prime minister is in Queensland. The Labor leader has been in South Australia and marginal seats in New South Wales.
The Coalition’s budget blueprint brings forward tax cuts, gives pensioners two cash payments of $250,
creates a time-limited hiring credit for businesses prepared to engage unemployed workers under 35 and supercharges business concessions in an attempt to drag the economy out of its first recession for 30 years.
Labor has already lent support to the income tax cuts and the generous business concessions, but Albanese has signalled he will consider dumping the government’s third round of income tax cuts – which are scheduled to occur after the election – because the measures favour higher-income earners.
It was mooted before the budget that the government could bring forward the stage three tax cuts as well as the stage two package. The stage three proposal reduces the tax rate for those earning between $45,000 and $200,000 to 30 cents in the dollar. But the government did not pull forward the most controversial element of the tax package.
Responding to the signal from his opponent on the stage three package, Morrison declared on Tuesday: “I’m not surprised that Anthony Albanese wants to take away people’s tax cuts.”
“What you can always know from
Labor, when you hear that they want to spend more, always know that they want to tax you more,” the prime minister said. “That’s how it works with Labor.”