In the Sydney Morning Herald this morning.
- Former Reserve Bank board member Professor Warwick McKibbin hs suggested a new election may be needed to resolve the Senate impasse holding up the budget
- And has” hit out at the political populism of the Greens and Palmer United Party”
- Meanwhile, Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Saul Eslake has suggested a mini-budget is ”one of the options the government needs to think about”
- Commonwealth Bank chief economist Michael Blythe said the Treasurer needed to be pragmatic about what could be passed ”either in negotiations, or in terms of recasting the budget
The article is ungated, but the above is the gist of it.
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A couple of takeaways:
1. The government is trailing badly in opinion polls. There is no way the PM will call an early election being so far behind. He isn’t stupid.
2. A ‘mini-budget’ is shaping up as a very likely option (IMO)
3. Politics is barely mentioned in the drivers of the AUD at the moment, it doesn’t seem to be much of a market concern. “Politicians being politicians” is the accepted norm …
(… OK, 3 takeaways then …)
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Added: Here’s a timely item I just found:
Latest Morgan Poll:
- The ALP had increased 1.5% to 56% while the LNP had fallen by the same amount to 44% (for those outside Australia, Labor is the opposition, LNP (aka the Coalition) is the governing party)
- The poll was conducted on the first two weekends of August
The latest Newspoll – published in The Australian – showed the Coalition’s primary vote is back up to 40%, for the first time since April
- The poll shows Mr Abbott is on 41% compared to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten who is on 37%
- Newspoll has Labor’s primary vote now sits at a three month low of 34% after falling two points.
- On a two party preferred, Labor continues to be ahead at 52% against the Coalition’s 48%
- (Again, for those outside Australia, it’s the “two party preferred” that shows who is net in front)
