Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. The
Speaker 1: federal budget has been hit by a fierce campaign from
Speaker 1: large sections of the media and a handful of high
Speaker 1: profile millennial entrepreneurs, but so far Labour's polling has remained
Speaker 1: relatively unscathed. But that doesn't mean voters are happy. People
Speaker 1: might not be shifting their votes over this budget, but
Speaker 1: many still feel there's nothing in it for them right
Speaker 1: now for the coalition. That should be an opening instead
Speaker 1: one nation's turning that frustration into real momentum. Today, director
Speaker 1: of Strategy and Campaigns at Redbridge Group Cos Samaris on
Speaker 1: Labour's budget woes, the coalition's failure to capitalize, and the
Speaker 1: populist rights growing hold on Australian politics. It's Saturday, May
Speaker 1: twenty three. It's good to see you again. This week
Speaker 1: the Treasurer has been doing a bit of a media
Speaker 1: blitz defending the government's latest budget. They've been facing some
Speaker 1: pretty big attack campaigns from the opposition and from some
Speaker 1: corners of the media.
Speaker 2: This is a government they're just run out of money
Speaker 2: and it's coming after Australian's money and it's doing that
Speaker 2: through tax sites.
Speaker 3: Not just but this is a budget built on lies.
Speaker 2: It's built on higher deficits, more debt, lower living standards
Speaker 2: and fewer homes.
Speaker 1: So how much of a hit has the government actually
Speaker 1: taken in the polls?
Speaker 3: Well, right now, I would say zero, because what we
Speaker 3: do know about how long it takes for any political
Speaker 3: news to actually be absorbed by enough people in the
Speaker 3: country for it to be statistically viable as a captured audience.
Speaker 4: It takes a.
Speaker 3: While for that to actually happen. And so really the
Speaker 3: only people I think would have tuned into the budget
Speaker 3: on those who are negatively impacted, so clearly people with shares,
Speaker 3: people who are negative gearing, who may have checked it
Speaker 3: out to see whether it's grandfather or not. But based
Speaker 3: on a lot of the qualitative research we've done over
Speaker 3: the last week or so, there's been very little cut through,
Speaker 3: except for amongst younger Australians who think it didn't go
Speaker 3: far enough in recalibrating the iniquity.
Speaker 1: What did you make of the news? Pilot said fifty
Speaker 1: two percent of the people feel the budget will leave
Speaker 1: them worse off.
Speaker 3: The latest polls show the PM's popularity has nosedart voters
Speaker 3: are threatening to walk away from the major parties and
Speaker 3: barely anyone thinks they're better off.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's accurate And if so, where's that
Speaker 1: sentiment coming from.
Speaker 3: That sentiment's coming from a general sentiment across the country
Speaker 3: that the country's heading the wrong direction. And that's really
Speaker 3: a manifestation, not necessarily whether government is performing well or not.
Speaker 3: It's just that they think the world around them is
Speaker 3: in disarray. The economy he's struggling as a fuel crisis
Speaker 3: and inflationory crisis. They're being buffeted by one crisis after another.
Speaker 3: They've not seen daylight since the pandemic. The mental state
Speaker 3: of the Austraian populace is probably rock bottom, and it
Speaker 3: really is not always about politics.
Speaker 1: What have you made of the overall reaction from the
Speaker 1: media in the days and now weeks after the budget.
Speaker 3: Look, I'd say it's a campaign that I've seen run
Speaker 3: many times. It works for a particular group of Australians,
Speaker 3: much older Australians, but it's completely tone deaf when it
Speaker 3: comes to the sentiment that we are seeing expressed by
Speaker 3: younger Australians, and that is most younger Australians think that
Speaker 3: the system, the tax system is not engineered for them
Speaker 3: full stop, and most of these are younger Australians, are salaried.
Speaker 3: Contrary to the narrative that has been put out to
Speaker 3: the last week, they're not all tech bros.
Speaker 4: They don't have.
Speaker 1: Jazz millennial entrepreneurs.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: The vast majority of them belong to that renter cohort,
Speaker 3: particularly in Sydney, Melbourne and now increasingly in cities like
Speaker 3: Brisbane and Perth and Adelaide. They are overwhelmingly people with
Speaker 3: no political power, no asset power, no financial power, and
Speaker 3: they want someone to go into bat for them. And hence,
Speaker 3: so far, I think that the Labor government took that
Speaker 3: positive step forward. Then you can do a lot more
Speaker 3: and more importantly, I think that the political fallout from
Speaker 3: this budget is going to be pretty minimal.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that Labor hasn't really taken a hit in
Speaker 1: terms of its primary vote. It's steady thirty one according
Speaker 1: to newspar but the Coalition has gone down to twenty
Speaker 1: and one Nation has gone up to twenty seven percent.
Speaker 1: So that's right. Why is one nation coming out on top?
Speaker 3: Cause so what we're seeing is is that news polls
Speaker 3: One Nation vote bounces around a lot and so does
Speaker 3: ours when whenever we publish numbers. Because we are living
Speaker 3: for a transitional period. We are seeing a complete restructure
Speaker 3: of the center right of politics. That's going from a
Speaker 3: process now where people will move from one position to
Speaker 3: the next over time, but it will eventually settle to
Speaker 3: around what we're seeing where one nation will probably be
Speaker 3: sitting in the high twenties and the coalition on a
Speaker 3: good day will break twenty.
Speaker 1: In your view, because is Alberanzi as Prime Minister doing
Speaker 1: enough to about the rise of the populace right here?
Speaker 1: This is bigger than making sure government business fronts smoothly
Speaker 1: while the other side tea is it south apart? This
Speaker 1: is really actually about the soul of the country, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. And really it's also for them being
Speaker 3: the labor government and the labor camp carefully observing who
Speaker 3: is their constituency and the budget was pretty clear and
Speaker 3: it was pitching a very strong narrative to that constituency
Speaker 3: if you look at what is propping up Labour's vote
Speaker 3: and their seats. We still predict the Oubani's government to
Speaker 3: be re elected as it stands right now. Could change,
Speaker 3: but as it stands right now, and that is possible
Speaker 3: because of the constituency they leaned into at that budget.
Speaker 3: So the Two Party preferred to vote for Labor amongst
Speaker 3: Generation Z, that is Australians between eighteen and twenty eight,
Speaker 3: is just over seventy percent. It's extraordinary that the levels
Speaker 3: the Two Party preferred vote Amongst Astralians who speak a
Speaker 3: language other than English at home seventy percent and amongst
Speaker 3: millennials it's fifty six. And so these constituents are going
Speaker 3: to drive strong electoral results for Labor and lock in
Speaker 3: at least a minimum of seventy plus seats for them
Speaker 3: on a.
Speaker 1: Bad day coming up? Was this the final budget reply
Speaker 1: from the coalition? Because this should be perfect fighter for
Speaker 1: the coalitions, saying Labor broke faith with voters. They're attacking
Speaker 1: aspiration through the politics of envy, are going after what
Speaker 1: they say is the fair gos. The coalition's opportunity to
Speaker 1: leverage this budget and become a real force in politics again.
Speaker 1: Is that something that's a possibility.
Speaker 3: I don't think so, because the word fair go. Most
Speaker 3: people will tell us they think there is an a
Speaker 3: fair go in the country right now, even before the budget.
Speaker 3: They think the system the tax system is designed to
Speaker 3: reward people with wealth and not those with incomes. And
Speaker 3: that's the overwhelming position of everyone that is voting Labor,
Speaker 3: Green and One Nation and Independent, everyone but the Liberal Party.
Speaker 3: And the only electrics that the Coalition is now left
Speaker 3: holding are electorates, which are similar to Till electorates. But
Speaker 3: these electrics that they've got, which is only just over
Speaker 3: a dozen, are basically electrics with high numbers of people
Speaker 3: with investments and assets. So the Coalition might be referring
Speaker 3: to their own base, but that's a shrinking base at.
Speaker 1: That So how would you assess Sagus Taylor's messaging this
Speaker 1: week more broadly?
Speaker 3: Pretty poor going to what we've just been talking about,
Speaker 3: and that is a growing number of Australians not feeling
Speaker 3: that they are being given the fair go. And then
Speaker 3: the other one, which is of course his migration policy,
Speaker 3: which was, in my opinion, policy designed to completely lock
Speaker 3: themselves out of big urban Australia.
Speaker 2: This isn't fair, So we're making some changes. We're going
Speaker 2: to put Australians first. We'll restrict those seventeen welfare programs
Speaker 2: any India to Australian citizens only. Labor puts you second,
Speaker 2: the Coalition will put Australian first.
Speaker 3: So No only doesn't touch Australians who are permanent residents.
Speaker 3: What do he fast from understand is many of these
Speaker 3: Australians who are permanent residents also have family who are
Speaker 3: citizens in their own household. There's the mixed households. They
Speaker 3: you might find a situation where the grandparents are permanent
Speaker 3: residents but the adult children are citizens. That this is
Speaker 3: not unusual and something that was absolutely prevalent when I
Speaker 3: was growing up in the Greek and Itanian communities in Australia.
Speaker 3: And that migration art takes a while. So you're planning
Speaker 3: to bring over your brother and sister and that period
Speaker 3: of uniting your family a new home takes about ten
Speaker 3: to fifteen years. You rely on that permit residency framework
Speaker 3: to facilitate that. So if you fall in half times,
Speaker 3: the governments there to help you if you're a permanent resident.
Speaker 1: So anyone who understands kind of like the fabric of
Speaker 1: Australia and multiculturalists in particular, understands that dynamic and understands
Speaker 1: that story. What explains his politics on this? Has he forgotten? That?
Speaker 1: Is he not aware that that's what happens in Australia.
Speaker 1: That aspiration of people coming here and making a better
Speaker 1: life here is impossible without government support.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we are now seeing an opposition desperate
Speaker 3: to survive and they think that immigration is the only
Speaker 3: thing that's going to help them. They fail to understand
Speaker 3: the reason they're in this terrible situation is because they've
Speaker 3: taken their eye off representing working class conservative Australians who
Speaker 3: have voted for them for many years, not the top
Speaker 3: end of town, and they always resort to immigration because
Speaker 3: it's easy. They think that if they try to outperform
Speaker 3: Paul and hands On that they might bring back some
Speaker 3: of those votes. Well, when we look ask Australians who
Speaker 3: have moved to One Nation from the Coalition as to
Speaker 3: why they've done that, the majority have moved over because
Speaker 3: they think the two party systems broken, that the economy
Speaker 3: is not working for them. They want to burn the
Speaker 3: place down. Only about thirteen thirty to seventeen percent have
Speaker 3: done so because of immigration.
Speaker 1: And do you think that chasing the one nation votes
Speaker 1: by adopting their rhetoric and policies might just end up
Speaker 1: validating One Nation as a party even.
Speaker 3: More yeah, absolutely, that's exactly what's going to happen. So
Speaker 3: the Labor camp had this problem versus the Greens. They
Speaker 3: thought that if they tried to outgreen the Greens, they
Speaker 3: will arrest their problem on the left during the last
Speaker 3: twenty years. And they gave up that idea and started
Speaker 3: just focusing on their strengths and that seems to have
Speaker 3: worked for them as an electro strategy, but it took
Speaker 3: a while for them to realize that. But they didn't
Speaker 3: have a massive existential threat on their left flank. It
Speaker 3: was a minimal threat and it was very geographically contained.
Speaker 3: The flip side for the collision is that that is
Speaker 3: not a luxury they have. And so by embarking on
Speaker 3: this strategy of trying to outperform poll enhance on immigration,
Speaker 3: the other thing they've done is, of course you have
Speaker 3: in excess of two million Australians who are permanent residents.
Speaker 3: You're going to now encourage hundreds of thousands of them
Speaker 3: to become citizen enrolled to vote.
Speaker 1: Out of fear. And you've said, because that this might
Speaker 1: be the last or second last budget replied delivered by
Speaker 1: a Liberal MP, that's a pretty extraordinary thought. Do you
Speaker 1: think one nation will overtake the Liberals as the main
Speaker 1: opposition voice.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, So unless something changes, what we're predicting is
Speaker 3: the one nation will win the bulk of the electrics
Speaker 3: outside the large cities. The Coalition will be cut down
Speaker 3: to only a handful of seats, probably as high as
Speaker 3: I think the high teens, as low as single digits.
Speaker 3: I do put a cabt. It can change because we
Speaker 3: are for as I touched on, living for a quite
Speaker 3: transformative period. But that's the world we're looking.
Speaker 1: At from a seat perspective. How many seats are we
Speaker 1: looking at? That one nation could actually end up at
Speaker 1: the next election.
Speaker 3: With anything from somewhere in the mid forties to about
Speaker 3: sixty seats is what we're looking at the moment, and
Speaker 3: predominantly in the regions and some in the outer suburbs
Speaker 3: of a large cities, largely coming off the coalition, but
Speaker 3: also a bit off labor.
Speaker 1: And what about Barnaby the Great White Hope, how's he looking?
Speaker 3: He doesn't need to stand for this, and he can
Speaker 3: win New England quite comfortably. I would expect that the
Speaker 3: one antion primary vote in New England would be close
Speaker 3: to almost allowing him to win on primary votes alone.
Speaker 1: Wow. Thanks for coming on the show and taking us
Speaker 1: through the reaction to the budget, which was aimed at
Speaker 1: young people like us.
Speaker 4: That's right problem.
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Speaker 1: made by Adigus Bastow, Ariel Richards, Chris Dangate, Crystal Keller,
Speaker 1: Ruby Jones, Travis Evans, Zoltanfecho and me Daniel James Now.
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Speaker 4: End