Labor MPs admit they fear the worst as a round of opinion polls show the Gillard Government heading for a landslide defeat at the September 14 election.
“We’re in more trouble than Indiana Jones,” backbencher Graham Perrett told ABC radio this morning.
The latest Newspoll, published in The Australian, has the Coalition stretching its lead to 16 points, with a primary vote nudging 50.
If the 58-42 per cent poll result was repeated at the September election, Labor’s representation in parliament would be nearly halved to 37 seats, ABC election analyst Antony Green predicts.
Perrett’s seat of Moreton, in suburban Brisbane, would be one of the first Labor seats to go on election night.
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In more bad news, a Herald-Sun poll shows Labor facing massive swings against them in Victoria.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus would lose his seat of Isaacs on a 15.4 per cent swing against Labor, the poll predicts.
Independent senator Nick Xenophon said Labor’s position was dire.
“These polls seem to be not so much within the margin of error as the margin of disaster,” he told reporters in Canberra.
“The Labor MPs I speak to are pretty despondent at the moment, and I think they’re just hoping it’ll tighten before election day.”
