Polls spell trouble for Gillard as criticisms mount

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo / Getty Images

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's woes continue to mount, with polls reporting a continuing slide in popularity, opposition to her plan to send asylum seekers to other countries in the region and a lukewarm response to her Budget.

Gillard is also facing trouble with some of Labor's most staunch union supporters and public servants.

To underline the problems her minority Government faces, the navy patrol boat HMAS Bathurst yesterday intercepted another boat off Christmas Island, with 55 passengers and two crew on board.

The asylum seekers will stay on Christmas Island only as long as it takes to find a place abroad under a policy that has drawn criticism from the United Nations and Australian opponents.

Two polls - Newspoll in the Australian and Nielsen in Fairfax newspapers - yesterday showed the the Prime Minister's dire situation.

Newspoll said Gillard's personal standing was below that of Kevin Rudd when he was ousted as leader and had fallen to its lowest since she became Prime Minister last June.

Support for Gillard as preferred Prime Minister fell to 42 per cent and Opposition leader Tony Abbott's rose to a high of 38 per cent, while satisfaction with her performance plummeted to a record low of 34 per cent, compared with 38 per cent before the Budget.

Dissatisfaction rose six points to 55 per cent, her highest level yet.

The Fairfax Nielsen poll said that for the first time Abbott recorded a higher approval rating than Gillard. Gillard's approval score slid to 43 per cent and her disapproval rating rose to 52 per cent.

Her preferred Prime Minister rating slipped three points to 47 per cent, while Abbott's rose two points to 44 per cent.

The Sydney Morning Herald said these were her worst figures since she took over from Rudd in June and were almost as low as Rudd's approval rating nadir of 41 per cent, also in June.

Both polls reported Labor trailing the Opposition in the two-party preferred vote that determines Australian elections.

They also showed that Treasurer Wayne Swan's fourth Budget failed to give Labor sufficient traction to force the political agenda away from Abbott's telling attacks on border protection and Gillard's proposed carbon tax.

Finance Minister Penny Wong has been pushing the line that the Budget was framed for the benefit of the country rather than opinion polls, and that Abbott's criticism was the "mindless negativity" of a politician good at fighting but not leading.

Newspoll said that while more people thought the Budget would be good for the country than bad, 41 per cent felt they would be personally worse off, while only 11 per cent felt their life would be better.

And 41 per cent said the Government could have produced a better Budget, against 38 per cent who supported Swan's strategy and 21 per cent who were undecided.

The Australian said this was the lowest support for a Government's Budget and the highest for an Opposition since Paul Keating's Labor Government Budget in 1995.

Nielsen found opinion evenly divided, with 44 per cent satisfied with the Budget and 44 per cent dissatisfied.

The Nielsen poll showed 60 per cent of voters do not support the Government's policy of shipping newly arrived asylum seekers to a third country.

The policy follows East Timor's refusal to host a regional detention centre, and discussions with Papua New Guinea to reopen former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard's "Pacific solution" camp on Manus Island, closed when Labor won power in 2007.

Gillard has reached agreement in principle to take 4000 refugees whose status has already been approved from Malaysian detention camps, in return for sending 800 asylum-seekers directly to Malaysia.

Thailand's Foreign Minister, Kasit Piromya, has since expressed his country's interest in a similar deal.

Meanwhile, the powerful Community and Public Sector Union, representing most federal public servants, has warned of strikes if the Australian Public Service Commission cuts conditions, wages and leave entitlements.

The union covers 150,000 employees in 68 agencies.

While saying strikes would be a last resort, the union warned that the first to be affected would be border protection agencies including customs, immigration, defence and agriculture and quarantine officials.

And the nation's workplace relations tribunal, Fair Work Australia, yesterday pushed the Government back into negotiations with its finding that about 200,000 community servers at present seeking a 25 per cent pay rise were paid lower wages because most were women.