While handouts for drought-affected farmers has near-universal support, voters are more divided over other forms of corporate welfare. There is strong support for the private healthcare rebate, assistance for tourism and food processing, but thereafter Essential found much more even attitudes toward assistance:
Liberal voters are more likely to support the diesel fuel rebate for miners, which costs taxpayers $1.9 billion a year, the private health insurance rebate and negative gearing than Labor voters, while the latter are more likely to support car and food manufacturing and handouts to the film industry.
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
