Abbott hit hard in aftermath of grim Budget

Tony Abbott. Photo / AP

Polls show gamble on Australians accepting pain has failed badly.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is waging a desperate campaign to convince Australia that his economic strategy is both necessary and fair, against a tsunami of anger that has pushed his Government into new realms of unpopularity.

Opposition to last week's Budget continues to mount with mass street rallies and rebellion by the mainly Liberal states giving muscle to polls that have uniformly destroyed Abbott's personal status and pushed Labor to a commanding lead.

Abbott's gamble that Australians would accept the pain, forget the broken promises and return to the fold appears increasingly ill-judged, even with more than two years until the next election. The measures he has taken are not a one-off hit that will fade in time, but long-term fundamental changes to Australian society deeply affecting the poor and vulnerable, with the pain increasing with the years.

Abbott also wants to rewrite federalism, redefining relations with the states beginning with the A$80 billion ($86 billion) he intends stripping from health and education funding. He toyed briefly with the threat of a double dissolution election if key measures were blocked in the Senate. Opposition leader Bill Shorten urged him to "bring it on". But this would be a high-risk strategy for both major parties. Labor has yet to convince voters that it is a new, reformed, united party and could still face rejection in an early election. For the Coalition, post-budget polls have been disastrous. Abbott has since eased back, saying he expected to serve a full term.

Yesterday, a Nielsen poll in Fairfax newspapers and a Newspoll in the Australian hammered the message home. Nielsen gave Labor a 12-point lead in the two-party preferred vote that decides Australian elections, and Newspoll a 10-point advantage. Both showed Shorten as preferred prime minister for the first time by a comfortable 10-point lead.

The polls showed overwhelming rejection of the Budget. More than half of Nielsen respondents, and 45 per cent in Newspoll, said it would be bad for the country. Only 5 per cent in Newspoll thought they would be better off, and 63 per cent in Nielsen regarded the budget as unfair. An earlier Morgan poll found 88 per cent of consumers and 74 per cent of businesses felt the Budget would bring no benefits. A weekend News Ltd Galaxy poll said three in four Australians felt they would be worse off, and confirmed Labor's lead over the Government.

Abbott has been hardest hit by two powerful impressions: that he broke key election promises, including no new taxes, no cuts to health or education, and no changes to pensions; and that his measures are unfair.

In the face of repeated evidence, he appears to be backing away from his earlier insistence that no pledges were broken and his view that "different people would have heard different things", instead claiming his overarching promise was to restore the budget to surplus and reduce debt, whatever the cost. Refusing to budge on his measures and saying voters had been "on notice" of big spending cuts before the Budget, he said yesterday: "My job is not necessarily to win a popularity contest. My job is to run the country effectively and that's what I'm going to do my best to do."

Abbott has also tried to cloak himself in the mantle of former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard claiming his mentor had taken a big popularity hit after his first Budget in 1996. In fact, Howard's stocks rose.

The broken promises will be an albatross around Abbott's neck until the next election, joining the huge groundswell of opinion that regards the budget as anything but fair. By far the biggest impact will be felt by the aged, the infirm, the unemployed and low and middle-income earners. They were the direct target for the deepest cuts and will bear the greatest pain.

"Conservative" estimates in an analysis in Fairfax newspapers yesterday by Australian National University pubic policy experts Peter Whiteford and Daniel Nethery showed incomes for the poor would be cut by 10-18 per cent, while someone earning three times the average wage would lose less than 1 per cent of take-home pay.

State Premiers warned that they would have to cut their services as a result and have demanded an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister. Abbott has rejected the call.

Almost as popular as haemorrhoids

It's fortunate popularity is not Tony Abbott's goal because haemorrhoids, an out-of-control Justin Bieber and even the dreaded torture chamber from Orwell's 1984 would be beating him.

The hashtag #MorePopularThanAbbott began trending on Twitter yesterday, a dig at the Australian Prime Minister's declaration he wasn't vying for popularity following two bad post-budget opinion polls.

Twitter has been bombarded by hundreds of creative taunts declaring Kim Jong Un, the Spanish Inquisition, rabies and leggings as pants all more popular than the Australian leader.

Floppy disks, granny knickers, cane toads, soap in your eyes, parking inspectors, the Westboro Baptist Church and a post-teen Bieber were all more popular.

Even sporting stars have been pulled into the mix, with one tweet claiming that detested England cricketer Stuart Broad is more popular.