The polls, Jeremy Cordeaux observed on this week’s Court of Public Opinion, have finally caught up with the government. Labor has slumped to its worst polling since the Julia Gillard years — and Jeremy’s diagnosis came in just two words.
Lies And Backflips
The cause, he said, was lies and backflips. A steady run of broken promises and reversed positions has, in his telling, eroded public trust to the point where it now registers starkly in the numbers.
It’s a thread he has pulled at for months: the distance between what the government says and what it does, and the slow decay of credibility that follows. This result, in his reading, is that decay finally showing up on the scoreboard.
The Telltale Second Figure
Jeremy flagged another number he found revealing: home-loan applications down around 20%. That, he suggested, likely traces back to the budget — evidence of households pulling back, wary of committing to a mortgage in the present mood.
Taken together, the two figures sketch a public both disenchanted with the government and anxious about its own finances. Falling loan applications speak of caution; sinking polls speak of lost faith. For a government, neither reading is anything but grim.
Will Anyone Report It?
His sharper point concerned the coverage. A result this poor — Labor’s worst since Gillard — ought to lead the bulletins. Yet Jeremy predicted the media would likely make little of it.
That expectation reflects a familiar frustration: that bad news for the government tends to be softened, while equivalent numbers for the other side would dominate the headlines. Whatever the coverage, he argued, the underlying verdict is unmistakable.
A Deficit Of Trust
For Jeremy, the polling isn’t about a single survey — it’s about trust, accumulated and squandered. Voters forgive much, he argued, but they notice when promises made to win votes are quietly dropped.
The lies and backflips he describes aren’t abstractions; they’re the withdrawn fuel relief, the buried reports, the shifting positions he has logged week after week. The poll, in his view, is simply the invoice arriving.
The Outsiders Gain
The winners from a crumbling major-party vote, Jeremy has argued consistently, are the plain-speaking outsiders — figures like Pauline Hanson who prosper precisely when the establishment loses its credibility.
Labor’s worst polling since Gillard, seen that way, is more than a rough week. It’s a signal that the trust deficit is real and measurable — and, absent a genuine change, likely to keep driving disillusioned voters toward the alternatives.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
The Court of Public Opinion streams live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ACST), right here at jeremycordeaux.com. Download the podcast anytime on your favourite podcast app, and join the conversation with your calls and comments.
