Peter van Onselen and Matthew Franklin | The Australian
PRESSURE is building on Kevin Rudd to forget about losing left-wing supporters to the Greens and instead protect his right flank against an exodus of supporters alienated by his new 40 per cent tax on mining.
Senior Labor figures and strategists told The Australian yesterday that while angry left-wingers might vote for the Australian Greens in the coming election, their votes would almost certainly return to Labor through preferences.
As Labor reeled from two more bad opinion polls showing it well behind the Coalition, party insiders warned that Labor's real political peril lay in losing its right-wing support base - moderates attracted to its social policies but nervous about higher taxes.
"It's people who depend on the mining industry and who worry about its future that we need to worry about," one frontbencher said yesterday, asking not to be named.
Labor's reassessment of its political tactics yesterday came after a Nielsen poll published in Fairfax newspapers found the Coalition ahead of Labor by 53 per cent to 47 per cent in two-party-preferred terms.
