Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is confronting falling approval ratings midway through his first term, with an increasingly anxious electorate brushing aside his recent run of diplomatic successes and international agreements.
An Essential Media poll this week showed Albanese’s net approval rating turned negative for the first time since he took office 18 months ago. Some 35% of respondents were dissatisfied with his performance, while 33% approved, for an overall reading of minus 2%. Three months earlier, more Australians supported Albanese than disapproved — with 37% in favor and 29% against.
Australians are fretting about stubbornly high inflation and interest rates. The Reserve Bank last week renewed its tightening campaign, raising borrowing costs to a 12-year high — the only developed-world central bank to hike since September — and voicing concern CPI may take longer to return to target.
A poll by Resolve also released this week found the primary vote for the Labor government had dropped to 35%, the lowest level since the election in May 2022. A Newspoll earlier in the month gave the opposition center-right Liberal National Coalition its best result in more than two years.
Australia isn’t due to hold an election until at least May 2025.
Speaking in Parliament on Monday, Albanese defended his government’s economic record, saying it’s working to bring down inflation and is providing cost-of-living relief for Australians.
“We’ve created 550,000 jobs since we came to office, more jobs have been created on our watch than under any first-term government in Australia’s history,” he said. “And we did something those opposite never did: we turned a A$78 billion ($51 billion) deficit into a A$22 billion surplus.”
The government has been constrained from providing more help to voters by the need to restrain spending in order to avoid adding to inflation pressures.
Albanese’s worsening approval rating contrasts sharply with his high-profile overseas visits in recent weeks. These saw him feted at the White House, finalize a restoration of relations with China and sign an unprecedented agreement with the Pacific nation of Tuvalu on climate refugees and security.
At home, the prime minister suffered a political blow in October when his signature referendum to create an Indigenous advisory body to Parliament was soundly rejected by Australian voters. That prompted the initial criticism that he had been more focused on social reforms than on the economic difficulties of the electorate.
Albanese’s international travel has been turned against him by the opposition, with some lawmakers taunting him as “Airbus Albo.”
Opposition leader Peter Dutton, a former policeman from Queensland, said Wednesday that Albanese should cancel his trip to APEC in the US this week to focus on domestic concerns.
“It’s clear to many Australians that the wheels are falling off the government,” Dutton told reporters in Canberra.