Malcolm Turnbull loses 29th straight Newspoll as Labor vote climbs

Labor’s primary vote has risen despite Bill Shorten’s tax plan as Malcolm Turnbull loses his 29th straight Newspoll.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is edging closer to 30 straight Newspoll losses. Picture: AAP

Labor’s primary vote has returned to levels not seen since Malcolm Turnbull rolled Tony Abbott for the Liberal leadership, despite Bill Shorten’s plan to axe tax-credit ­refunds for more than one million retirees.

In what will come as a shock for the government as it heads into the final week of parliament ­before the May budget, the opposition has cemented its lead over the Coalition in the latest Newspoll, despite a majority of Australians claiming to be ­opposed to the Labor leader’s $59 billion tax grab.

With the Prime Minister now just one loss away from 30 losing Newspolls — the measure he used against Tony Abbott as an indicator of failed leadership — the revelation that Labor has extended its primary-vote lead will unsettle Coalition MPs who believed Mr Shorten’s policy of ­“robbing” one million retirees would be the beginning of the government’s political revival.

The poll, the 29th to record the Coalition trailing Labor on a two-party-preferred vote, revealed that only a third of voters claimed to back Mr Shorten’s tax policy, with one in two lining up against it.

With the Opposition Leader forced into a partial backdown following the release of the plan, promising to compensate retirees, Labor strategists had been bracing for an electoral backlash reflected in the polls.

However, the Newspoll of 1597 voters conducted over the weekend reveals that the only change to people’s voting intentions was in fact a slight swing to Labor, which improved its primary vote one point to 39 per cent, with the Coalition unchanged on 37 per cent.

It is the first time since September 2015, when Mr Turnbull ­challenged Mr Abbott for the leadership, that Labor’s first-preference vote has been as high and leaves the Coalition still trailing Labor on a two-party-preferred vote of 47-53.

The tax gambit has failed to damage Mr Shorten, with his satisfaction rating among voters lifting a point to 34 per cent.

This puts him two points ahead of Mr Turnbull, who remained steady on 32 per cent.

A gap of only three points separates the leaders, with Mr Shorten climbing a point to 36 per cent and Mr Turnbull regaining some ground lost during the Barnaby Joyce scandal, with a two-point gain to 39 per cent.

The Newspoll also covered a period that saw the resumption of hostilities between the Catholic schools sector and Education Minister Simon Birmingham over the Gonski 2.0 funding model. Labor claimed the issue helped fuel a swing towards it in the Batman by-election.

Late last week senior Liberal MPs were privately predicting an electoral backlash against Labor to be reflected in the Newspoll figures, with the hope that it would trigger a political revival for the Coalition.

“If we don’t get a bounce out of this we won’t get a bounce from anything ... (Shorten) has effectively gone out and said to a million people, ‘I’m going to rob you’,” one senior Liberal MP said.

“You would expect at least a two-point movement.

“If we don’t it suggests that the vote is so baked in that it doesn’t matter what Shorten goes and does to people.”

Senior Labor sources also told The Australian that they had expected the party would “take a hit” from the policy after an internal debate over the timing of its release.

The Newspoll figures show only 33 per cent of voters in favour of the policy, with 50 per cent opposed and 17 per cent undecided. As expected, the largest group opposed were the over-50s.

Only a slight majority of Labor voters back the plan — 52 per cent — with 73 per cent of Coalition voters claiming to be against it, confirming the Labor leader’s gamble that it was an issue what would affect mainly rusted-on Coalition voters.

However, 61 per cent of One Nation voters also claimed to be opposed to the policy, with 32 per cent of Greens opposed and 47 per cent in favour. Support was also strongest among millennials (18 to 34-year-olds) with almost a quarter of 35 to 49-year-old voters uncommitted.

The national poll, conducted between March 22 and March 25, shows no change for One Nation, on a primary vote of 7 per cent, and no movement for the Greens on 9 per cent.