Abbott Government takes housing hit in the polls

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By Leith van Onselen

It seems selling-out your children on housing and denying same sex couples marriage rights are not the recipes for electoral success, with two polls released revealing the Abbott Government has suffered a big drop in support.

A Fairfax-Ipsos poll, released yesterday, revealed that Labor’s share of the two-party-preferred vote after preferences now stands at 53% to 47% for the Coalition, representing a 6.5% swing away from the Abbott Government since the 2013 poll, which would be enough to see 30 Liberal-National seats fall to Labor.

The post-budget survey held in May had the two parties at level-pegging on 50% to 50%.

According to the poll, only 29% of capital city residents believe that housing is affordable compared to 69% who disagree, with only 18% of Sydney residents believing housing is affordable.

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The results are just as bad for the Government when it comes to same sex marriage, where 68% of voters now disagree with Prime Minister Abbott’s refusal to legalise it.

Meanwhile, a poll released last night by Roy Morgan Research (RMR) revealed that support for the ALP has risen to 54.5% on a two-party preferred basis versus 45.5% for the Coalition, with Treasurer Joe Hockey’s comments on housing raising the wrath of voters:

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According to Gary Morgan:

“Hockey was in the news last week for all the wrong reasons – stating that first home buyers should ‘get a good job that pays good money’ if they want to buy a house in Australia’s booming residential property markets – particularly his home city of Sydney. Hockey’s comments attracted a lot of negative media attention for the Government with many media pundits branding Hockey as ‘out of touch’ for the comments”.

“The recent deterioration in support for the Government comes only two weeks before Parliament rises for the Winter break at the end of next week – to return in mid-August. The Winter break will come as a welcome respite for Prime Minister Tony Abbott – assuming he avoids the mid-Winter fate of Australia’s two most recent Prime Ministers, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Both were deposed from the top job in June – as we are being reminded at present with the ABC TV show ‘The Killing Season’.

As we have noted previously, next year’s Federal Election is shaping up as a battle of the generations, with the Abbott Government firmly going after the grey vote with its refusal to tackle superannuation, negative gearing and capital gains tax reform, and its promise to keep house values rising.

By contrast, Labor is seemingly appealing to younger Australians with its apparent concerns around housing affordability and flagged reforms to superannuation, negative gearing and possibly capital gains taxes as well.

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What the Coalition may not have bargained for, however, is that many older Australians, while they love to see their housing assets rise in value, hate seeing their children and grandchildren miss out. This factor alone could tip the scales in favour of Labor at the next election.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.