Swan On Song

Australians have given Federal Opposition Treasurer Wayne Swan the seal of approval a week after snubbing incumbent Peter Costello.

The dominant view in all states and territories, bar Western Australia, is that Swan would be highly effective as the nation’s Treasurer, according to a CoreData minipoll of more than 6,000 people.

The data, collected over Thursday and Friday last week, revealed 55% of the public believe Swan would be either highly effective (31%) or effective (24%) as Treasurer against 39% who believe he would be highly ineffective (24%) or ineffective (15%) in managing the nation’s fiscal issues.

Opposition leader Kevin Rudd last week publicly announced Swan would hold the position of Treasurer in the event of a Labor win at the polls later this year.

When split by states and territories, the figures reveal a broad national acceptance of the member for Lilley in Brisbane’s northern suburbs as Costello’s replacement if Labor wins the upcoming election.

The highest response for every state and territory, excluding WA, noted Swan would be highly effective as Treasurer.

The only anomaly was in Australia’s most Western state were 29% of the more than 500 respondents there said Swan would be highly ineffective compared to 27% who strongly backed him in the role.

(click HERE to view the results using CoreData’s virtual map software)

Despite the general positive acceptance Swan received from the public the role of Federal Treasurer is a thankless task it seems.

Last week incumbent Peter Costello was given scant credit by the nation’s public despite presiding for more than a decade over what has become an unprecedented period of economic expansion.

As reported in burningpants last week, one in two (57.9%) Australians believe Costello should take no or very little credit for the nation’s strong economic growth.

In fact 17.9% of the more than 8,000 people in the poll using CoreData’s minipoll software stated Costello should take no credit and 40.0% said he should take very little credit.