Posted on 02/08/2015 1:55:31 PM PST by naturalman1975
PRIME Minister Tony Abbott is facing an uphill battle after a Newspoll has revealed the Coalition’s worst polling figures, and Liberal MPs are divided on the leadership spill.
The latest Newspoll, taken exclusively for The Australian, shows the Coalition’s primary vote down three points to an eight-month low of 35 per cent. Labor is up two points to 41 per cent.
In two-party terms, the government’s vote went to 43 per cent with Labor on 57 per cent, which is the Coalition’s worst result since November 2009.
Tony Abbott has admitted he could be removed as leader on Monday but says he respects the party room and expects the result will accurately reflect their views.
“I would expect that if a minister was incapable of supporting the government that the minister in question would have spoken to me, and none of them have,” he told ABC TV.
“We will see tomorrow what my colleagues believe.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
The Prime Minister has just entered the party room followed by a large number of his MPs, including his Deputy Leader. This is a show of strength and confidence. I hope it is justified.
I’m planning on ‘liveblogging’ this thread for anybody who is interested.
Why is he unpopular with the voters and what percentage of voters are we talking about?
Only about 30% of voters think he is the best choice as Prime Minister on today’s polling.
As to why - I’ll post something I wrote the other day on that in a moment.
It is mostly undeserved - but there have been some genuine errors. Undeserved - large sections of the media blaming the Abbott government for things that were caused by the previous Labor government. Examples - (1) Labor reopened the detention centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea to deal with the influx of asylum seekers their policies had created. They didn't upgrade the facilities to deal with the numbers of people they were sending there. Now there are major problems at the centre, and the media is screaming that the Abbott government hasn't fixed them. (2) Under Labor, Australian intelligence services bugged the phone of the President of Indonesia. Leaving aside the fact that this is really just a normal intelligence operation, the media found this out prior to the last election and deliberately sat on the story to avoid embarassing the Labor government. It only came out after Labor had lost the election, when it could damage the new governments diplomacy with Indonesia - and many people were left with the false impression that the spying had occurred after the election rather than before it. (3) Labor (and the Greens) won't pass the budget through the Senate and because of that, Australia's economic position is deteriorating. We can fix the budget if we can't pass the budget. But rather than blaming Labor and the Greens for blocking the budget, the media would prefer to blame the government. (4) The media is treating promises for funding from 2018 onwards that Labor never intended to deliver as if they were genuine problems, and so are describing Abbott as having cut funding to education and health based on those empty promises, even though the budget for both is actually increasing.
Genuine issues - (1) A spur of the moment statement the night before the election has created a sound bite that can be used to attack the Prime Minister for breaking an election promise. The issue is actually more complicated than that - technically no promise was broken - but the sound bite should never have happened. (2) The Prime Minister is a lousy salesman. He hasn't explained why certain things are necessary (for example, why they need to reform health funding), he's simply tried to push ahead with the changes without explaining them. As he can't get them through the Senate, it means wasting political capital for nothing. (3) On some issues (in particular one relating to freedom of speech/freedom of the press), Abbott has moved to the centre and alienated the conservative base. He probably had to abandon the plan as he would have never got it through the Senate, but some of us would have preferred him to try that fight, even if he lost it, rather than simply give up in the apparent hope of gaining some support from the centre and the left, that he was never likely to get in the current climate. (4) He sometimes acts without consulting his Cabinet as much as he should - he's the leader and he's allowed to act unilaterally, but some things he's done has taken his Cabinet by surprise - even if all he does is tell them "This is what I am going to do, and I won't be argued with," it would have been better than doing it without even telling them. (5) This last one happened at the start of last week, and is partly an illustration of some of the other problems. He announced that Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh had been given a Knighthood of the Order of Australia. Very minor, totally symbolic, but it sent the left wing media into an absolute frenzy of irrational hatred and they've turned it into a huge story - and even many conservative columnists can't understand why he spent political capital on something that mattered so little at a time when people are looking for reasons to attack him.
Finally - his single biggest success - stopping the flow of asylum seekers to Australia - is one a lot of Australians are uncomfortable with, even though they wanted it to happen. It makes it hard to use it as an electoral plus. Nobody wants the asylum seekers here - but at the same time, nobody wants to be seen as cruel or unkind to desperate people. The Australian public want a government to do what this one has done - but they don't want to feel personally responsible for it.
The spill vote has apparently already happened less than 10 minutes after the party meeting began. They are counting the votes now.
Nobody wants the asylum seekers here - but at the same time, nobody wants to be seen as cruel or unkind to desperate people. The Australian public want a government to do what this one has done - but they don’t want to feel personally responsible for it.
Most Australian’s don’t want the asylum seekers - but the issue is that they won’t personally say that. They want the government to be tough on this issue - but they want it at arms length.
It’s moral cowardice in action.
Thank you for that summary. One headline that has been consistently popular here in the States is Abbott’s firm stance on the Global Warming hysteria. Are Aussies keen to the scam that the left is perpetrating via carbon emissions and so on?
great summary, thanks!
Didn’t he take a stand against global warming?
Yes, he did - he has described the idea of climate change as ‘bulls**t’, and he scrapped the Carbon Tax, Labor introduced. This was a major achievement, but electorally is fairly neutral at this point.
Australia is split on the climate change issue. Very much so. Labor lost office for introducing a carbon tax, but that was primarily because it was a broken promise, rather than strong general opposition to the idea in general terms. Abbott is opposed to the idea of wasting money on dealing with the idea of climate change - I don’t think he believes in it, but it’s more a matter of, “Even if it’s real, Australia can’t do much about it, so we’re not going to cripple our economy for symbolism” as far as a lot of voter are concerned. If the world moves towards widespread change, Australia would probably go with it - but people see no reason we should do what other countries won’t.
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