The Turnbull government has hit a new low in its two-party preferred vote and the Greens trail One Nation in a fresh poll that also shows widespread anger at the Centrelink debt debacle.
The ReachTel poll of 2,126 Australians for the progressive political campaign group GetUp shows the Coalition trailing Labor 46% to 54% in two-party preferred terms.
The poll, taken on Thursday and released on Monday, found One Nation has a primary vote of 9.7%, ahead of the Greens on 8.9%.
One Nation has steadily risen in the polls, from a nationwide Senate vote of 4.3% at the July election, to a Newspoll in October showing it with a vote of 6%.
The ReachTel poll found One Nation support was strongest with men, and people over 51, with more than 11% of people in those groups indicating they would vote for it.
Respondents were asked if they supported stopping Centrelink using automated systems to issue tens of thousands of letters about alleged debts. Most (46.2%) were in favour of ending the system, compared with 31.8% who wanted to keep it and 21.9% who were undecided.
However, respondents were told that “the government admits that at least 20% of [Centrelink] letters are incorrect, but the burden is on Centrelink clients to correct the information or pay the debt”.
In fact, the government disputes accusations the Centrelink debt recovery system has an error rate of 20%.
In a statement on Friday the human services minister, Alan Tudge, said the first letter sent was “not a debt letter” but rather notes and asks people to explain the discrepancy between their income data held at the Australian Taxation Office with the income they declared to Centrelink.
“On 20% of occasions, the recipient is able to validly explain the discrepancy in the data,” he said. “In the other 80% of occasions, a debt notice is subsequently issued.
“This is not an error rate. This is the system as it was designed to work.”
On Thursday Guardian Australia reported that before Centrelink adopted an automated system an internal analysis showed that 15% of detected discrepancies were not debts owed.
The automated system has come under significant criticism because individuals are told to begin paying even when they dispute a debt.
In many cases, welfare recipients are not receiving initial letters owing to changes of address, or are unable to track down years-old information about their income to prove they were entitled to benefits.
The Labor opposition has said debts are issued on an unfair, indiscriminate and inaccurate basis to low-income and vulnerable people, including one case of a cancer survivor told to repay $4,500 he claimed while recovering from chemotherapy.
Asked in the ReachTel poll how “errors with the Centrelink automated debt recovery system” affected their vote, 49.8% said it made them less likely to vote for the Coalition compared with 14.4% who said they were more likely to and 35.8% who said it would not impact their vote.
Asked which should be the Turnbull government’s priority, a large majority (82.2%) nominated cracking down on international tax avoidance, compared with recovering debts from Centrelink overpayments (17.8%).
Respondents were asked given the “significant errors” in the system whether individuals should have to “defend themselves which may include accessing pay slips and employment records from up to five years ago”.
Most said the burden of proof should be on Centrelink (78.6%) not the individual (21.4%).
The poll was taken on Thursday after a week of revelations of taxpayer funded travel claims by ministers and MPs to attend sports events and Sussan Ley’s trips to the Gold Coast including one on which she bought a $795,000 apartment and two to attend New Year’s Eve events with multimillionaire Coalition donor Sarina Russo.
The week culminated in Ley’s resignation as health minister on Friday.
GetUp’s campaigns director, Mark Connelly, said the poor poll result was “no surprise” given revelations government ministers had been spending taxpayer funds on chartered flights and to go to polo matches “while sending tens of thousands of false debt-threat letters to everyday Australians”.
“Treating Australians like crap is going to get you crap poll results.”