Honeymoon schmoneymoon

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From the AFR:

In the first The Australian Financial Review/Nielsen poll since the September 7 election, Labor leads the Coalition on a two-party preferred basis by 52 per cent to 48 per cent, a post-election swing towards Labor of about 6 percentage points.

Labor’s primary vote rose 4 points from its election result to 37 per cent and the Coalition’s fell 5 points to 41 per cent.

In a finding which will give Prime Minister Tony Abbott pause for thought, should he be considering an early poll on climate change, 57 per cent of voters believe Labor should vote to abolish the carbon tax.

But the most popular alternative is Labor’s proposal to move to an emissions trading scheme (ETS). Just one in 10 voters support the Coalition’s direct action policy.

Voters marked down the Coalition over its secretive asylum seeker policy, with 42 per cent approving the government’s handling of the issue and 50 per cent disapproving.

Voters are split on the Coalition’s other policy priority, abolishing the mining tax, with 46 per cent supporting its abolition and 47 per cent opposed.

…Nielsen poll director John Stirton said Labor’s two-party lead 10 weeks since the election made it the earliest ever for an opposition to hit the front after a change of government.

Roy Morgan has been tracking a similar lack of honeymoon for the Coalition:

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My own view is that the Coalition is making exactly the same mistake that Labor did. It is putting politics ahead of the nation across its platform.

About the author
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.