A majority of voters see China and the bilateral relationship as a complex issue to be managed rather than a threat to be confronted, and more voters trust Labor than the Coalition to manage that complexity, the latest Guardian Essential poll suggests.
After a bare-knuckle political week where the prime minister, Scott Morrison, branded Labor’s deputy leader a “Manchurian candidate” and declared the ALP unequal to the task of managing the regional threat environment, the latest poll of 1,089 respondents suggests Australians hold a nuanced view of the Australia-China relationship.
While last week’s partisan confrontation played out in stark binary terms, the new poll shows 61% of respondents characterise the bilateral relationship with Beijing as complex, and only 26% see it as a threat to be confronted.
The proportion of respondents seeing the China relationship as a threat is now only two percentage points higher than it was when voters were asked this same question in September 2021. Last year, 66% of respondents characterised the relationship as a complex dynamic to be managed.
Morrison last week repeatedly accused Labor of being “weak” on security threats and declared that only the Coalition would not “appease” Beijing.
But the data shows the opposition currently maintains a nine-point lead over the Coalition when people are asked which party they trust to manage the Australia-China relationship. Just over a quarter of respondents (28%) say they trust the Coalition to build the relationship in Australia’s best interests, while 37% say they trust Labor to, and 34% of respondents are unsure.
Morrison sought the partisan confrontation with Labor on national security and China after suffering a significant parliamentary defeat the week before, when moderate Liberals effectively torpedoed the prime minister’s signature religious discrimination legislation.
The politicisation was blatant enough to prompt a rare public rebuke from the head of Asio, Mike Burgess. Burgess warned twice last week the pre-election weaponisation of serious issues made it harder for Asio to do its job.
Former Asio chief Dennis Richardson went further. He argued in a series of interviews last week that the Morrison government was serving China’s interests, not Australia’s, by politicising national security ahead of the election, and “seeking to create the perception of a difference [between the major parties] when none in practice exists”.
National security is generally considered fertile political territory for the Coalition. But metrics charting primary voting intention and approvals suggest Morrison and the Coalition went backwards during the past parliamentary fortnight – although the movements are within the poll’s margin of error, which is plus or minus three points.
Voting intention figures calculated by Guardian Essential now express the head-to-head metric of the major party contest as two-party preferred “plus” rather than the standard two-party preferred measure. This change in methodology, adopted after the 2019 election, highlights the proportion of undecided voters in any survey, providing accuracy on the limits of any prediction.
Labor is on 49% (up two points) and the Coalition on 45% (down one point), with 6% of respondents undecided in the latest two-party preferred “plus” measure. Labor’s primary vote is 38%, up from 35% a fortnight ago, and the Coalition is on 35%, down from 37%, with the number of undecided voters going from 8% to 6%.
Labor’s primary vote in the current survey is the highest it has been since January 2020, when Morrison’s standing took a hammering during the catastrophic bushfires of that summer.
Morrison’s net approval has also moved from zero to negative in the latest data, with 44% (down two points) of respondents saying they approve of the prime minister’s performance and 49% (up three points) saying they disapprove.
Anthony Albanese’s net approval has bumped up from zero to positive, with 42% (up three points) of respondents saying they approve of the Labor leader and 39% (steady) saying they disapprove.
Albanese also closed the gap slightly with Morrison on the poll’s “better prime minister measure”. Morrison still leads his Labor counterpart 40% to 35%, with 25% undecided. A fortnight ago Morrison led Albanese 42% to 34% with 25% undecided.
A number of questions put to voters about the attributes of the two major party leaders suggest Morrison has lost standing with voters since the middle of last year.
But despite his current difficulties, Morrison continues to rate ahead of the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, and the defence minister, Peter Dutton, as the preferred Liberal party leader (30% say Morrison, 13% say Frydenberg and 9% say Dutton, while 16% respond “other” and 32% are unsure).
