A clear majority of voters in Malcolm Turnbull’s Sydney electorate of Wentworth want the corporate tax rate to either stay the same or be increased, according to a new ReachTel poll funded by a progressive thinktank.



The pushback from voters on the prime minister’s home turf comes as the Turnbull government and key business groups have launched a last-ditch effort to persuade the Senate crossbench to support the government’s policy to cut the headline tax rate for big businesses to 25%.

With the One Nation bloc key to breaking the parliamentary deadlock, the Business Council of Australia has focused its persuasion effort on Queensland over the past fortnight.

The BCA placed full-page advertisements in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail on Tuesday, as well as in regional newspapers throughout Queensland, and will launch radio ads in support of the government’s position. The ad also ran in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

The heads of the BCA and the Council of Small Business Australia travelled together to north Queensland last week to generate support for the change from local business chambers.

With Senate debate on the measure scheduled to begin on Wednesday, both organisations have sent video messages to all senators in support of the change.

BCA video

The Australia Institute, which funded the Wentworth poll, has produced its own video message for senators, urging them to ignore the full-court press from the business lobby.

The group’s executive director, Ben Oquist, warns senators in the video that tax cuts for big business represent a “multibillion-dollar threat to Australia’s revenue base”.

“We will be stealing from our children’s future when so much of that revenue will flow out the door to mostly foreign-owned multinational corporations,” Oquist says in the video message, while noting that a succession of opinion polls demonstrate that the public opposes the change.

The ReachTel poll showed 68% of a sample of 676 voters in Turnbull’s electorate either wanted the company tax rate to stay the same or be increased.

The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has signalled he wants a vote on the measure in this parliamentary fortnight before the May budget. The government has support for the change from the crossbenchers Cory Bernardi, Fraser Anning and David Leyonhjelm.

One Nation has opposed the cut but is now back at the table negotiating with Cormann. The NXT bloc is standing firm against the tax cut – a position it communicated to the government on Monday.

The chief executive of the Council of Small Business of Australia, Peter Strong, met one of the new Senate crossbenchers, Tim Storer, on Monday, shortly after he was sworn in, to try to persuade him to support the government’s proposal.

Strong later told Guardian Australia: “We are supporting the company tax cuts all the way through.”

As well as testing parliamentary support for the big business tax cut over the coming fortnight, the government will resume put pressure on Labor over its policy to end cash rebates for excess imputation credits for individuals and superannuation funds.

Labor is likely to offer pensioners a concession in recognition that the policy does hit a small group of genuine low-income earners.

