has tracked a range of measures that should be very concerning for the government and its senior ministers.
The great difficulty for the Labor Party for a long time, going back to the 1990s at least, has been voter unwillingness to believe in its capacity to manage the economy. But in January, Resolve found Labor ahead of the Liberals as the better economic manager 37 per cent to 29. For the government, the polling is not disastrous. On voting intention, it still outscores the Coalition parties after preferences, and it rates reasonably on competence and leadership. But the trend is there. On the measure of which party is listening and focusing on the right issues, Labor has dropped from 41 per cent in January to 28 per cent now, while the Liberals have risen from 16 per cent to 23 per cent.
Ideally, our hearts and minds are capacious enough to be able to countenance more than one set of issues at the same time, and it should not be beyond us to extend our gaze beyond our own interests. But in politics, as in life, timing counts for so much.