Canberra: Chris Bowen has accused the government of “desperation” while challenging it to put its money where its mouth is and call a general election, after leaked Liberal party polling pointed to Bill Shorten’s declining personal popularity, particularly with young women.
The shadow treasurer described the release of the Liberal party polling, published in the Sunday Telegraph, as an act of desperation, and said Labor remained “very competitive” under Shorten’s leadership.
Newscorp reported Shorten has recording a net favourability rating of -45 in Braddon, -27 in Longman and Mayo, with the South Australian electorate, which Labor has never held, also showing Shorten was particularly unpopular with young women, rating -77 with female voters under 35.
“I mean, that’s how desperate they are,” Bowen told Sky News. “I don’t even know how accurate it would be. Obviously we all say we don’t comment on the polls but, if you look at the polls, we’ve been in a strong position for a long time.
“We’re very competitive under Bill’s leadership. I’m very comfortable with that. We are leading the policy debate. We’ve taken the approach to win this election on policy. That’s the approach we’ll continue to take. We are going to fight hard.”
Repeating what is becoming a familiar refrain from the Labor frontbencher, Bowen called on the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to call an election, if he was confident of the government’s renewed popularity.
While Shorten’s political rivals, including Pauline Hanson, who last month said her “women’s intuition” left her unable to warm to Shorten, have been playing up the Labor leader’s consistently low personal popularity ratings compared with Turnbull, Labor remains ahead of the government in the polls overall.
“We don’t take anything for granted and we’re not getting ahead of ourselves,” Bowen said. “We’ve got a task ahead of us to win the respect of the Australian people with a general election but, I’ll tell you what, if Malcolm Turnbull’s so ready for an election, why doesn’t he hop in the car, go down and see the governor-general, call an election?
“It’s a Sunday, it’s not a bad day for it, call an election and we’ll get on with it.”
The Liberal party polling was released after Shorten’s captain’s call on company tax cut legislation already passed was largely reversed by the Labor leadership late last month.
Shorten had committed the party to reversing the tax cuts for businesses with a turnover of between $10m and $50m already legislated but, after days of dissent within the Labor caucus and the business community, backtracked to announce the cuts would remain down to 27.5 per cent, not 25 per cent as the government intended.
The Braddon and Longman by-elections, the only two of the five where Labor and the Liberal party are properly going head to head, are being billed as a test of Shorten’s leadership, with a sitting government not having won a by-election since the early 1900s.
Both remain tight contests, with One Nation preferences, which have been directed away from Labor, playing a particularly crucial role in the Queensland seat of Longman.
