"Abbott lied his way into office" - 67% agree; leaked polling

Well Abbott's polling isn't exactly making a comeback from the budget slide disaster. In fact one still wonders if the slide has reached bottom yet, or is it starting to settle around 6 points behind the opposition? Whatever the intricacies of the polls may be, all those votes he's lost since last Sept aren't going to come flooding back in the same way.

Laurie Oaks offers some insight into Abbott's spectacular pre-election lies. He's said in the past that he'd do anything to become prime minister, and this was no exception:

So that makes his lies even more so. He's claiming now that the only reason for the budget was because they discovered Labor's debt when taking office and everything had to change for a "budget emergency". This wasn't the case at all.

What really happened was that he always had to plans to slash and burn like Campbell Newman, but when he saw that Newman was providing the electorate with an example of what an Abbott gov would do and that people were agreeing with that assertion, that's when he came out with all these promises just before the election that he's in so much shit over now. Justifiably so, as it's plain as day now that with all those pre-election promises he was absolutely lying through his teeth.

“He lied and he lied and he lied,” the Opposition Leader said. 

That is strong stuff. Normally a political leader would be very cautious about such a crude line of attack, mindful that it might alienate voters. But Shorten decided to go all-out after studying Labor’s post-Budget polling. 

A report from the polling firm UMR Research, based on 1000 interviews the weekend after the Budget, included the heading: “Voters accept ‘lies’ language regarding Abbott”. 

People had been reluctant in previous surveys to call the PM a liar, even when they acknowledged he had broken promises. After the Budget, though, some were volunteering the opinion that “he’s a liar”. UMR asked its randomly selected voters if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “Tony Abbott’s broken promises in the Budget show that he lied his way into office. He lied on Medicare, he lied on pensions, he lied when he said no new taxes. What his lies mean for low- and middle-income families is cuts, new taxes and extra costs.” Only 27 per cent disagreed, 8 per cent were unsure and 67 per cent agreed. Asked whether the statement was fair or unfair, 65 per cent said it was fair, 31 per cent thought it unfair, and 4 per cent were unsure. 

That was Shorten’s green light. 

An irony is that polling was partly responsible for putting Abbott in this position in the first place. 

In the middle of last year’s federal election campaign, Labor changed strategy and went for broke with a scare campaign alleging that a Coalition government would engage in massive spending cuts. 

When polling by both Labor and the Coalition showed that was starting to resonate, Abbott very quickly made some of the promises that are shredding his credibility now. 

He dismissed Labor’s claims as “scares based on lies” and adopted the mantra: “Under the Coalition, no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no change to pensions, no change to the GST.” 

It was in line with advice from key Liberal strategists to do whatever it takes to ensure an election win and worry about the consequences later. One of those consequences is the difficulty Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey are encountering in selling the Budget. more