[BLOOMBERG] Anti-immigrant populists and the opposition Labor party advanced in opinion polls as Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government descended into infighting.
One-in-10 people surveyed by Newspoll backed Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, more than double its support base late last year, amid her attacks on Moslem immigration, free trade and foreign investment in Australia.
Labor climbed 1 percentage point to 37 percent, while the incumbent Liberal-National coalition fell 1 point to 34 percent, according to the survey published by the Australian newspaper Monday. The poll showed that, on a two-party preferred basis, Labor would trounce the government 55 percent to 45 percent in an election.
Turnbull is being undermined by his hard-line conservative predecessor Tony Abbott, seven months after scraping an election victory with a razor-thin majority. Abbott last week conducted a media blitz calling on Turnbull to slash immigration, scrap a renewable energy target to lower electricity prices, abolish the Human Rights Commission, reform the upper house of parliament and cut government spending to undercut One Nation’s supporter base.
Turnbull said the "outburst" was "sad" and wouldn’t distract him from governing; Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, once a loyal Abbott supporter, described the comments as "deliberately destructive" to his colleagues.
|