Rudd in swamp of bad-news polls

Kevin Rudd. Photo / Greg Bowker

CANBERRA: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's progress towards this year's looming election is a bit like slogging through a swamp: a gruelling series of potholes and sandbanks that alternately swallow and elevate.

And yet, even with the polls glaring malevolently from the reeds, there are signs that Rudd will endure and ultimately totter out ahead of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

On Thursday he was given a little nudge forward from the federal industrial arbiter Fair Work Australia, which awarded the nation's lowest-paid workers a A$26 ($30.91) a week rise in the minimum wage.

He was also provided with another boost from the latest national accounts, which as well as recording economic growth of 2.7 per cent, demonstrated that this growth is still being sustained by the controversial economic stimulus launched during last year's global financial crisis.

That was one step up on to a sandbank. Next step was back into a pothole: further criticism of the woefully managed stimulus plan to provide schools with new facilities, which now hangs around Rudd's neck along with the disastrous home insulation and solar power schemes.

Graphically backing the continuing chorus of criticism, Rick Bennett arrived on the lawns of Parliament with prefabricated framework to show just what A$600,000 granted under the scheme had bought his tiny school outside Dubbo, in the central west of New South Wales. It was a canteen just 3m wide by 8m long.

Rudd has also been hammering his plan to impose a 40 per cent "super tax" on the miners who provide the bulk of Australia's export wealth, intended to cream some off the top for the wider benefit of the nation.

On the face of it this Robin Hood sort of tax should appeal to Australians. Polls suggest it is not as clear cut.

A Newspoll in the Australian this week showed more opposed the proposed tax than supported it - 41 per cent to 36 per cent - and those who believed it would worsen their financial position outnumbered those who thought they would be better off by 31 per cent to 22 per cent.

A Morgan poll found 48 per cent opposed the tax compared with 44 per cent who supported it, and reported that opposition soared to 78 per cent in the big mining state of Western Australia, which will be central to Rudd's chances of re-election.

The Government is under heavy attack from the miners, who are refusing to budge and who have launched a prime-time television campaign against the planned tax.

Labor is also being hammered for the decision to ignore its own guidelines on advertising to allow it to spend A$38 million ($45.18 million) on a counter-campaign pushing its argument for the super tax.

The Government is also struggling in the polls. The most recent, a Newspoll in the Australian, showed the Coalition leading Labor 41 per cent to 35 per cent in the primary vote, with the Government managing only a marginal lead of 51 per cent to 49 per cent in the two-party preferred vote that decides Australian elections.

Newspoll said such a vote on election day would produce a hung parliament. But while it may appear the swamp is closing above Rudd's head, the Newspoll - and earlier polls - suggest the ground may in fact be firming under his feet.

The big surprise was a record high of 16 per cent for the Greens in the primary vote, which caught even Greens Leader Bob Brown off guard.

But when it comes to the election, most of these votes are likely to return to Labor, a fact acknowledged on ABC radio yesterday by Shadow Education Minister Christopher Pyne.

Pyne said votes were only being "parked" with the Greens: "In the most honest assessment of the polls, the Coalition hasn't yet won them and Labor has lost them, but could get them back."

And if Rudd and Labor are bleeding, so is the Opposition.

Each has lost ground in primary votes - Labor more heavily and to the Greens - and voters are increasingly unhappy with both Rudd and Abbott.

In the final leadership tally, 49 per cent prefer Rudd as Prime Minister, compared with 33 per cent for Abbott.