Damned If You Do…

Voters are hard to appease at the best of times it seems, but no time is more difficult than Budget time when the decisions made boost or hit them directly in the hip pocket.

Both Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan and Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson, did not endear the masses it seems with their respective Budget and subsequent formal response, last week.

Two CoreData polls – both involving just shy of 5,000 people, set out to test the post-budget water of Australia.

54% of Australians felt the Treasurer’s fiscal plan for the country did not do enough to offset the impending inflationary threat in the economy, while a similar proportion (57%) stated that Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson’s response the Budget was ‘poor’.

Only 41% of some 4,977 people in the first poll felt Swan’s Budget measures were sufficient to cool the economy, with 5% of people saying they ‘didn’t care’.

Meanwhile only 33% of the 4,477 individuals in the poll who were asked to rate Nelson’s response said it was ‘good’ with 10% stating Nelson’s comments were ‘fair’.

There was hardly any difference between the collective attitudes of men versus woman on the two above matters, with a mere 1 per cent band of variance between the response options by sex in both polls