Australians' Attitudes to Federal Budgets

Australians' Attitudes to Federal Budgets

With the Federal Budget due to be delivered by Treasurer Peter Costello on Tuesday, 10 May 2005 it is timely to look back at how Federal Budgets have been received by Australians.

We have graphed below the results of Newspoll research over the past 14 years.

The first graph plots Australians attitudes when they were asked how do they think the Budget will affect their own financial position over the following twelve months.

It shows that the last Federal Budget delivered by Peter Costello has a record high on this score with 29 percent of Australians believing they would be personally financially better off. Similarly, it had the lowest percent of Australians believing that they would be worse off.

With speculation of a tight Budget, cuts to Medicare and the recent interest rate increases the Howard Government will be hard pressed to achieve the same level of approval next month.

The next graph plots the results from polling asking Australians whether they believe the Budget will be good or bad for the Australian economy. Again the last two Coalition Government's Budgets have achieved strong support in terms of the impact on the economy with 50 percent believing it to be good to the Australian economy in 2004.