Resolve Political Monitor: Crushing blow for Anthony Albanese as Australian voters send him a harsh reality check on a key issue

Many voters blame Albania’s government for runaway inflation, despite efforts by the finance minister and a Labor Party predecessor to smear the Reserve Bank of Australia, a new poll shows.

According to the latest Resolve Political Monitor poll for Nine newspapers51 percent of the 1,614 voters surveyed believe that the government’s primary task is to keep rising prices under control.

Only 27 per cent of voters blame the RBA, despite comments from Finance Minister Jim Chalmers and former Labor Finance Minister and current party leader Wayne Swan criticising the RBA’s reluctance to cut rates.

This comes as the Coalition maintained its strong lead on the question of which party was the best economic manager, with 37 per cent of voters backing the team led by Peter Dutton, while only 26 per cent preferred the Labor line-up of Anthony Albanese.

When asked which party they trust to keep the cost of living down, almost a third (32 percent) named the Coalition over Labor (25 percent).

But when asked who is best at managing jobs and wages, the Coalition (33 percent) had a one-point lead over Labor.

Labor’s pre-election result fell from 29 percent to 28 percent in the past month, its lowest since the Resolve polls began in 2021. The Coalition’s pre-election result remained stable at 37 percent.

However, the rival parties are still neck and neck, with preference given to two parties. At the same time, there is increasing speculation that the next elections could lead to a parliament in which the votes are not equal.

A recent opinion poll has delivered more bad news for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (pictured right with fiancée Jodie Haydon)

When voters were asked how they would divide their preferences, support for the Coalition rose to 51 percent in two-party terms, while Labor was on 49 percent.

One of the few bright spots for Labor was that Albanese moved one point ahead of Dutton as preferred prime minister, with the men polling 35 and 34 percent respectively.

For the minor parties, the Greens’ primary vote remained steady at 13 percent, while Pauline Hanson’s One Nation also remained unchanged at six percent

Support for independents rose nationally by two percentage points to 12 percent.

Resolve chief executive Jim Reed told Nine newspaper that “voters thought the RBA was trying to fix problems that were partly caused by government”.

“Being blamed for inflation is even worse than feeling like nothing is being done to reduce inflation. That’s why the government has done everything it can to limit the impact,” he said.

‘But that doesn’t seem to work. More and more people think that the government is responsible for this.’

A recent poll shows opposition leader Peter Dutton being beaten by Mr Albanese as the favourite prime minister.

The RBA has set the cash rate at a 12-year high of 4.35 per cent in a bid to bring inflation back to the targeted range of two to three per cent.

In July, inflation fell to 3.5 percent, compared to 3.8 percent in June.

The central bank predicts that headline inflation will not fall to 2.8 percent until June 2025, bringing inflation within target for the first time since 2021.

After last week’s bleak news that Australia’s GDP grew by just 0.2 percent in the final three months of 2023, Chalmers said high interest rates were “crushing” the economy.

Mr Swan, who was finance minister during the Labor governments of Rudd and Gillard, went further on Friday, accusing the RBA of “slapping itself in the face” and being “counterproductive” by not cutting interest rates.

More than half of voters surveyed blamed Albania’s government for runaway inflation rather than the Reserve Bank of Australia (pictured)

“The government is doing a lot to reduce inflation, but the Reserve Bank is just slapping itself in the face. It’s counterproductive and it’s not good economic policy,” Swan said.

On Sunday, Chalmers distanced himself from Swan’s comments about the RBA, saying they went “much further” than he would have gone himself.

However, he continued to insist that the bank was “crushing” the economy.

Angus Taylor, the coalition’s shadow finance minister, said the Albanian government was trying to blame the bank for its own mistakes.