Labor is now the preferred party to handle the rising cost of living and interest rates after a collapse in the proportion of Australians who believe the Coalition is best on key aspects of the economy.
The result of the latest Guardian Essential poll of 1,123 voters is a warning sign for the Peter Dutton-led opposition, suggesting that voters are not angry at the Albanese government’s handling of the economy, despite the pain of 12 interest rate hikes and inflation.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will address the committee for the economic development of Australia in a state of the nation speech on Tuesday, arguing the government has helped “enhance economic security in a time of global uncertainty”.
“Advanced economies around the world are dealing with the very difficult combination of high inflation and rising interest rates,” Albanese notes in an advance copy of the speech, seen by Guardian Australia.
“Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine continues to impact international energy markets and supply chains.”
After the Reserve Bank again hiked the cash rate to 4.1% on 6 June, respondents were asked the extent to which they thought different factors had contributed to the decision.
About 63% thought that prices going up had “a lot” to do with it, while 40% believed the RBA was overreacting and 38% blamed the federal government.
Wages rising too quickly was nominated by just one-fifth (20%) of respondents as a major cause for rate rises, while one-third (32%) blamed supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic and 23% nominated the war in Ukraine.
People with a mortgage were more likely to blame rate rises on the RBA overreacting (51%) than they were the federal government (40%).
When it came to people’s views on which party was best to handle certain issues, Labor maintained its advantage over the Coalition on social issues, including: improving services such as health and welfare (Labor 43% to the Coalition 22%), reversing the trend of insecure work (38% to 20%) and climate change (34% to 18%).
Labor also recorded wins over the Coalition on several economic indicators: handling the rising cost of living (Labor 33% to the Coalition 27%), handling rising interest rates (30% to 26%) and reducing government debt (32% to 31%).
In each case there was a proportion of respondents who said there was “no difference” between the two major parties.
Since February, the proportion of respondents who favoured the Coalition on interest rates has collapsed 16 points from 42% to 26%. The Albanese government has a larger advantage among those with mortgages, one-third of who (33%) favour Labor on interest rates compared with less than a quarter (24%) who trusted the Coalition.
Most respondents (63%) said that interest rates will continue to rise, while 30% believe they will go back down but not for a while and just 7% believe they have peaked and will fall soon.
Albanese says the government has helped tackle the cost of living by tripling Medicare bulk-billing incentives for 11 million Australians when seeing GPs, cutting the cost of medicine with 60-day dispensing, and giving electricity price relief to 5m households.
The Guardian Essential poll also showed support among respondents for government initiatives to regulate artificial intelligence.
Earlier in June the industry minister, Ed Husic, revealed the government is considering banning high-risk uses of AI. In the Essential poll, some 56% supported such a ban, while 15% oppose it.
Respondents were split about whether the government should “create new laws to further regulate the development of AI” (48%) or better enforce existing laws (40%), but few (12%) said the government should leave it up to the market to ethically develop AI.
Respondents were mostly upbeat about use of AI in medical development, 60% said this was positive and 14% negative; facial recognition technology, 42% positive and 28% negative; and automating work processes, 40% positive and 32% negative.
They were more concerned by: driverless cars, 43% of respondents said this was negative to 28% positive; “AI that generates new content eg ChatGPT” 37% negative to 28% positive; and “creating virtual personalities”, with half the sample (50%) suggesting this was negative and 17% positive.
