It's the deal she can't seal

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This was published 12 years ago

It's the deal she can't seal

By Peter Hartcher

The empress has strutted forth in her new clothes, and the people have hissed and booed. Not only do the people think Julia Gillard's new green packaging is threadbare, it turns out they like the empress even less than the clothing.

Today's Herald/Nielsen poll illustrates that Gillard's latest policy outing is not a political failure but a disaster. First, the announcement of the policy and its elaborate compensation arrangements did not win the Gillard government any votes. Labor's primary vote fell slightly to 26 per cent, the lowest for either of the main parties in the 39-year history of the poll. And Gillard's personal approval rating has worsened, sharply, to make her the most unpopular prime minister since Paul Keating.

The government's chief credibility problem ... Julia Gillard.

The government's chief credibility problem ... Julia Gillard.Credit: David Mariuz

Second, voters do not trust the government's plans to compensate them for the effect of the carbon tax. Two-thirds of households will be fully compensated or overcompensated, yet most people believe they will be worse off.

"This means they believe Tony Abbott, not Julia Gillard," says the Nielsen director John Stirton. The government's problem, in other words, is not what's being said but who is saying it.

Gillard is not the government's chief sales person. She is its chief credibility problem. Indeed, the carbon tax is better supported than the Prime Minister who is supposedly "selling" it - 39 per cent of respondents support the tax but only 26 per cent intend to vote Labor.

Who are the people who support the carbon tax but not Gillard's government? They are those who voted for the Greens at the last election. If Gillard were able to win them over, she'd be back in the game.

And that's the third devastating conclusion of the poll - 44 per cent of Greens voters think Gillard is mainly responsible for the carbon package, yet she does not appear to have won any extra Greens votes.

In other words, Gillard gets all the blame from those opposed to the tax but no new votes from those who support it.

This leads to the final verdict: most voters endorse Abbott's line that Gillard has exceeded her mandate and support an early election.

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''The real test will be the implementation of the carbon tax in a year's time," says Stirton. But do Gillard's courtiers have the nerve to wait that long in support of a leader without followers?

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