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And recent polling gives us some idea about how Queenslanders think Shambles and his troupe of clowns are traveling.
In a recent Reachtel poll Newman's performance was rated as poor or very poor by 49.4% of respondents, with 0.5% saying they didn't know (or perhaps wishes they didn't know) him. Less than a quarter (24.4%) thought the budget was good or very good, with 45.9% saying it was poor or very poor. And the big one - Asset sales, has only 23.8% support and among LNP voters only 49% support.
In his own electorate, 53% have rated Newman's performance as poor or very poor, and 48.5% of voters said they were more likely to vote Labor if Kate Jones ran at the next election.
Likely knowing that Asset sales were unpopular (were they paying attention when the Bligh government made that mistake?) the current government decided to waste $6M dollars on a 'Strong Choices' campaign which had nothing to do with consultation and everything to do with a publicly funded snow job. As Tim Nicholls admitted when he was in Townsville... the results of 'Strong Choices' will not be released because it will not dictate the decisions the government will make on the budget.
Now post budget, and given that asset sales is such a dog of a policy, one they will need to sell at the next election, it is no wonder they are currently trying to pick a fight with Palmer. On one level it is a distraction from how bad they are, and on another level it is a measure to try to stop all the LNP's rusted on supporters bleeding to PUP. The comments in the section below the article (link above) highlight how many people believe Seeney's move to refer Palmer to the CMC is politically motivated and designed to bail out a failed government.
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It seems that if Abbott does want to be the Infrastructure Prime Minister and not the White Elephant Prime Minister, he needs to abandon support for expansion at Abbot point.
The other major area of failure for the LNP government is jobs. The budget predicts rising unemployment. While Newman was elected on the promise of a 4% jobless rate by 2018, based on the latest budget, Treasury projects a jobless rate of 5.25% by that time. An issue also mentioned by other economists.
Before the 2012 election, Mr Newman said his unemployment target was unambiguous and unequivocal and challenged then Labor premier Anna Bligh to match his commitment.
In May 2012 (just after Newman came to power), the unemployment rate in Qld was 5.5%. Based on Treasury projections, Newman will have achieved essentially nothing on jobs in 6 years.
They quite simply need to go otherwise Queensland will be held back even more and for even longer.