A quarter of voters believe Australia has a higher national debt than other developed countries, polling from Essential Research reveals, and primarily blame the government’s poor economic management for it.
Last week Essential asked a series of questions around perceptions of the economy and the budget. On the size of Australia’s debt, 9% of voters think our debt is a lot higher than other developed countries’; 16% believe it is higher. Based on OECD data from 2010, Australia’s debt, at around 11% of GDP, was third lowest in the OECD and one-fifth of the OECD average of over 55%. Only 19% of voters correctly identified that it was a lot lower than other developed countries. Liberal voters were more inclined to believe we have a higher debt than elsewhere, with 33% of Liberal voters believing we have a higher debt than other developed countries.
And 46% of voters blamed the government’s poor economic management for debt levels; 46% also thought it was more important to reduce debt than maintain spending levels. In fact, 55% thought the best way to reduce debt was to reduce spending, compared to 13% who preferred to see taxes rise. However, there was a strong view that companies and high income earners don’t pay enough tax: 62% thought mining companies didn’t pay enough; 60% thought high income-earners don’t pay enough and 63% thought large companies should pay more. However, 43% thought small businesses paid too much.
But despite blaming the government for high debt levels, 39% of voters thought the government had managed the economy well compared to governments overseas, compared to 32% who thought they managed it poorly. There was a strong partisan dimension to those responses — 58% of Liberal voters thought the government had managed the economy poorly compared to overseas governments; 26% of Labor voters thought the government’s management was “very good”.
However, despite such negative views of Labor’s economic management, Joe Hockey doesn’t dominate comparisons with Wayne Swan — 35% of voters trust Hockey more than Swan in handling the economy, compared to 32% who trust Swan over Hockey. Only 4% of Labor voters trust Hockey, while 9% of Liberal voters trust the Treasurer.
There’s also been a rise in support for same-s-x marriage as the issue continues to garner attention at the federal level (the poll results were nearly all before Tony Abbott’s weekend announcement that he expected the issue wouldn’t be addressed in the next Parliamentary term). Some 58% of voters now support same-s-x marriage compared to 54% last month (the highest level Essential has yet recorded). Opposition fell a point to 32%, with “don’t knows” shifting to support. Liberal voters still remain the most hostile to gay marriage, but now 49-43% of Liberal voters support it.
On voting intention, the Coalition has remained steady on 48%, Labor has dropped a point to 33% and the Greens remain on 9%, shaking out to a two-party preferred outcome of 56-44%.
“Liberal voters were more inclined to believe we have a higher debt than elsewhere, with 33% of Liberal voters believing we have a higher debt than other developed countries.”
Further support to John Stuart Mills’ observation that while conservatives are not necessarily stupid, most stupid people are conservatives
To become such a quagmire as Europe, the ratio would have to soar sharply to around 80% currently Germany’s level or more.
Australia would have to issue more than a trillion dollars of debt in the next decade to become a member of the quagmire club.
Germany, by the way, still has a AAA stable credit rating at that debt-to-GDP level.
This is a depressingly true article. As voters have turned off the election four months early, it’s unlikely voters will become more realistic about the economy.
Fair Call Drovers Cat
In the Sunday Times in Perth there was an interesting piece on debt (so its probably in all the Ltd News publications)
I haven’t got the article in front of me so from memory
Showed that Australia’s total debt was about 227% of GDP and only 10% was the Feds with the balance being mainly consumer debt & corporate debt. I think personal credit card debt was higher than the Federal debt but don’t quote me on that.
Ant way it puts it in perspective and the level of corporate debt is in part becaise of all the Cap Ex plus the bias of debt over capital in the tax system.
Anyway it was a shot against the Debt fear campaign and good to see that it was in a News Ltd publication
The Pav – I read the same article. It explained very weel why debt is not a bad thing. For example people couldn’t buy a house without debt, companies could not expand without debt.
I seem to remember the comment in the article – its not the quantity of the debt – its the quality of the debt that matters