KEY POINTS:
Less than a week after taking a hammering in his first byelection since winning power last November, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is bracing himself for further proof that his political honeymoon is over.
This time it will be in the safe Liberal seat of Mayo in the Adelaide
Hills, held by former Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer since its creation 16 years ago.
Downer is expected to announce his resignation from politics tomorrow, enabling him to accept a post as UN envoy in Cyprus.
Even in the best of circumstances Rudd could not expect to win Mayo, but following last weekend's big swing against the Government in the by-election for the Victoria seat of Gippsland, a further punishing defeat would be seen as confirmation that Australians are rapidly becoming disillusioned with Labor.
Labor powered into office last year with the crushing defeat of John Howard, the nation's second longest serving Prime Minister whose Administration had become so unpopular that voters even threw him out of his own former blue-chip Liberal seat.
Rudd's extraordinary post-election honeymoon has foundered on economic shoals, battered by high interest rates, crippling housing costs, soaring food bills and rocketing petrol prices.
With Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson promising a 5 per cent cut in the fuel excise and portraying Rudd as a leader impotently wringing his hands as rising petrol prices hammered family budgets, voters delivered a stinging rebuke last weekend.
Labor's primary vote in Gippsland plummeted by 8.5 per cent, enabling National's candidate Darren Chester to win with 63 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. While Gippsland is traditionally a National seat, the swing against Labor was unusually large for such a young Government and reflected anger at petrol prices and the potential for further hip-pocket blows from Rudd's proposed carbon emissions trading scheme. Rudd conceded the point: "The people of Gippsland have said loud and clear their concerns about household budgets, from the global oil crisis and from rising interest rates, both of which have hit the family budget hard."
For the moment punishment at the ballot box is no significant threat to Rudd. Last week a Morgan poll put the Government's two-party preferred vote at 61 per cent, against the Coalition's 39 per cent.
A Newspoll in the Australian yesterday put the two-party preferred vote at 55 per cent for Labor and 45 per cent for the Opposition.
But pollster Roy Morgan said that while voters did not yet see the Coalition as a credible Opposition, confidence in the Government, and consumer confidence, had both plummeted since the last election.
Newspoll showed stronger reservations among voters.
It said Labor's primary vote had fallen from an April peak of 51 per cent to 44 per cent, matched by a dive in the two-party preferred vote from 61 per cent to 55 per cent.
Newspoll also said that while most Australians supported an emissions trading scheme in general, and that 56 per cent would be prepared to shoulder higher costs to pay for it, the nation was divided on whether it would tolerate even more expensive petrol as a result.
In Mayo, this will again be put to the test. Downer was hit by a 6.5 per cent swing to Labor in November, and was shaken by an earlier close call from the now-defunct Democrats. He retained his seat by a 7 per cent margin. In the coming byelection Rudd will face a probable swing back to the Liberals and a powerful push from the Greens.