Essential: No change to Labor victory march

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Via The Guardian:

An emphatic majority of Australians want a pay rise if companies get a tax cut courtesy of the Turnbull government’s commitment to cut the corporate rate to 25%, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.

The latest poll of 1,026 respondents shows 72% of the sample would approve of forcing businesses to pass on a certain proportion of their tax cuts as pay rises for their workers, and the approval for that trade-off stretches across all voting groups, and across full-time and part-time workers.

The government is vowing to press ahead with its proposed company tax cuts despite the fact published polling suggests the idea is politically unpopular, but the idea of making the tax cut conditional on giving workers a wage rise has been ruled out by the treasurer, Scott Morrison.

In an interview with Guardian Australia last week, Morrison flatly rejected the idea. “It is a highly interventionist method. It’s at odds with the way the Liberal and National parties would pursue growth in the economy.”

The Turnbull government’s new year efforts to put the chaos and political contention of 2017 behind it have been derailed by public controversy over the end of the 24-year marriage of the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, and his relationship with his former staffer, Vikki Campion, who went on to other government roles.

With that controversy blowing up publicly last week after months of rumour and speculation, the latest Guardian Essential poll has Labor steady in an election-winning position federally, ahead of the Coalition on the two party preferred measure, 54% to 46% – the same result as a fortnight ago.

Turnbull remains ahead of Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister, 42% to 27%, a 2% improvement for Shorten since the question was asked last month, and 31% of the sample were undecided.

The prime minister’s approval ratings are marginally better than the Labor leader, with 39% approving of the job he is doing as prime minister (up 1% from last month), and 42% disapproving (down 3%) – which is a change in net approval rating from -7 to -3.

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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.