Essential: our budget fears — and we prefer Clark over Rudd

Next week’s federal budget is going to hurt. At least that’s what most voters think.

New Essential polling shows most voters don’t believe there will be much in Scott Morrison’s first budget for them — despite the inevitable pre-election sweeteners. Just 10% of respondents to the poll believe the budget will be good for them personally, while 46% believe it will be good for people who are well off.

Almost half of respondents said it will be bad for people on low incomes; 44% believe it will hurt older people.

With an election campaign focused on issues of corruption — Labor is targeting banks and large corporates while the Coalition focuses on the unions and the building industry — a majority of voters (53%) think there is widespread corruption related to the tax payments made by large corporations. The concern is even across party lines (55% of Labor voters and 47% of Coalition supporters).

A total of 40% of voters reckon there’s widespread corruption in politics, 36% believe corruption in the building industry is ride, and 35% say there is corruption in the unions.

Unsurprisingly, Coalition voters are more likely to believe there is widespread corruption in the unions — 55% of respondents — compared to 19% of Labor voters.

Meanwhile, there’s bad news for Kevin Rudd in this week’s polling: more Labor voters support former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark in her quest for the top job at the United Nations over the former Australian PM.

Rudd hasn’t officially put his hat into the ring, but by all accounts he is planning to run for the position of secretary general. Essential’s polling of 1020 people last week showed a larger percentage of Australians would prefer he didn’t, with 45% of people indicating Clark would be a better boss than Rudd (at 21%). A third of voters don’t know which of the two would be better.

Coalition and Greens voters, not surprisingly, prefer Clark over Rudd by a massive margin. Labor voters, much like their party was during the Rudd-Gillard era, are more divided — but Clark still edges out Rudd.