Another round of opinion polls and another opportunity for we pundits to stroke our chins and act wise and as if we knew what they were going to say, all along. In fact, there are a number of surprises in the latest polls: few of them pleasant for the government.
The biggest surprise is that, despite all the suicidal antics of Sussan Ley and her gang of ‘moderates’, things are looking up for the Liberals. Of course, by ‘looking up’, I mean, ‘not getting any more shit than they already were’, which should have Anthony Albanese very worried: if even so shithouse an opposition as the Liberals can’t sink any lower by comparison, then his government is squatting in a castle built on shifting quicksands.
And a dogged political battler is pouring more water under the foundations.
The likeability of right-wing populist MPs including Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce and Andrew Hastie is surging among voters, in findings that internal critics of Sussan Ley could use to argue the coalition is on the wrong track.
In fact, Ley and her cabal of lettuce-leaf cretins are about the only people who can’t grasp just how far gone on the wrong track they are. Ley and the ‘moderates’ want to, in the Age’s words, “move the coalition back to the political middle ground”, which, in normal-person speak would mean, ‘dragging them back, kicking and screaming, from the lunar left’. But this is the Age: their “middle ground” is everyone else’s far left.
Meanwhile, you can almost hear the teeth-gnashing as the Age realises that, despite all their best efforts, more and more people are realising that Pauline Hanson is not the ‘far-right’ ogre they’ve been told. Or, more likely, people are just aren’t being bullied into hiding their admiration any more.
Hanson’s net likeability rating has risen from minus 13 percentage points in December 2024 to plus eight percentage points in the latest survey, a 21-point turnaround in just under a year.
This included a jump in enthusiasm of seven percentage points in just the last month, a period in which this masthead revealed Joyce is actively considering joining forces with her in One Nation.
On Sunday, Hanson posted photographs of her affectionate catch-up at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida with UK Reform party leader Nigel Farage, the canny right-wing populist surging in the British polls.
That is more than enough to send the legacy media hacks screaming for their safe spaces. You almost have to feel sorry for them: it must be quite exhausting to keep typing ‘right-wing populist’ through a haze of tears. Far from – as the ‘moderates’ claim – Barnaby Joyce being a political millstone, he’s proving a boost to One Nation’s already-rising fortunes, should he indeed join the party after quitting the Nationals.
Overall, 26 per cent of voters said they would be more likely to vote for One Nation if Joyce were to become leader one day compared to 22 per cent of voters who were less likely to back the party if he was in charge, while 53 per cent said it made no difference.
In a warning to Ley and Nationals leader David Littleproud, 33 per cent of coalition voters said they were more likely to vote for One Nation if Joyce was leader, just 19 per cent less likely, and 48 per cent undecided […]
Hastie, who resigned from shadow cabinet two months ago to hold forth on migration, climate and other conservative flashpoints, has also seen his net likeability rise from plus four in September to plus six in October to plus eight now.
Taken in conjunction with growing unrest over Labor’s mismanagement of the economy, One Nation’s burgeoning support has to be as much a worry for Albanese as for Ley.
Labor’s economic management, meanwhile, is coming under heavier scrutiny as two out of three voters said they would cut back on Christmas this year and three out of five said they couldn’t afford any unexpected major expenses.
Labor’s primary vote is down one percentage point to 33 per cent, continuing the trend of support for the government softening since a post-election high of 37 per cent in August. This month’s primary figure for Labor is also below the 34.6 per cent recorded at the May election.
For all that Labor and their Liberal ‘moderate’ fellow-travellers are convinced Australian voters are champing at the bit for ‘Net Zero’, the real Number One issue is cost-of-living.
A substantial 91 per cent of voters surveyed in the November Resolve Political Monitor nominated “keeping the cost of living low” as an important issue. Health and aged care was second on 86 per cent. This is close to the 92 per cent who nominated cost of living as the most important issue going into this year’s election. It has remained a top issue for voters.
When asked to nominate the policy that mattered most to them, 42 per cent chose “keeping the cost of living low”. No other single issue reached double digits.
And in concerning findings for the Albanese government, 42 per cent of voters hold the federal government most responsible for rising living costs, up from 36 per cent in October 2024: seven per cent blame businesses, seven per cent blame the Reserve Bank, 11 per cent blame state governments, 16 per cent blame global factors and 14 per cent are unsure.
If Barnaby does jump to One Nation, you can bet they’ll come out swinging with what many voters think, but no one else in the political class dare say: ‘Net Zero’ is a ruinously costly scam.
The Nationals MP, who is a vocal critical of renewable energy, has called renewables a “swindle” and “intermittent power”.
“It is a total swindle, it’s a Band-Aid on an amputated leg in the paddock. What we see is all of the things that [Tanya Plibersek] brought up where the taxpayers’ money is given back to taxpayers or non-taxpayers, it is not about a fundamental change,” Joyce says.
“The intermittent power swindle has brought a structural decline and destruction of our power grid.”
These are the sort of lines that won Tony Abbott a landslide victory, making him just one of three coalition leaders to win government from opposition in the last century.
