Gillard’s Tax Announcement Splits the Nation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article No. 1379 - The results of an analysis of the second-by-second reactions of over 300 typical Australians today.: July 10, 2011

Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement of the details of Labor’s Carbon Tax did little to sway opinions of voters of any political persuasion, according to an analysis of the second-by-second reactions of over 300 typical Australians today.

By the time of today’s announcement by Gillard, most of the details had been leaked to the media so there were no real surprises. While the reactions of the Greens bounced around, there was little movement among Labor and Liberal/National voters.

The Greens didn’t seem to like Gillard mentioning that there has been a ‘decade of debate’ and their graph seemed to cringe at the mention of Margaret Thatcher. The mention of John Howard’s attempt to put a price on carbon and Labor’s plan to support the coal industry seemed to be Green 'lead balloons.'

Labor voters didn’t react well to the ‘fixed price mechanism for 3 years’ and especially Gillard’s admission that it ‘effectively works like a tax,’ but generally they were in positive territory all the way.

Nobody liked hearing that the costs to businesses will be passed on to households and were generally unimpressed that the ‘modelling was done by the people who modelled the GST.'

Predictably, the very mention of ‘tax cuts’ and ‘payment increases for households’ gave the graph a lift with everyone, along with increasing the tax threshold from $6,000 to $18,200 p.a. The only other significant rises were ‘I believe in creating jobs’ and the ‘Focus on renewable energy.'

Marcus Tarrant, Director of The Reactor for Roy Morgan Research says:

“This is about the most consistent split I can recall from the hundreds of Reactor tests we’ve conducted over several decades. What we usually look for are the claims or promises that seem to gain traction with the non-believers and sceptics. In her announcement today, Gillard didn’t even come close to lifting the Liberal voters over the (magical 50%) line.

“These seemingly entrenched positions may be due, to some extent, to the complexities of this debate, many of which were not addressed at all — such as the wisdom of ‘going it alone.’ If there’s any comfort in these Reactor results at all for Julia Gillard, it would be that there is still significant support for the Carbon Tax Package among traditional Labor voters.”