All Coalition guns should be aimed at Shorten

Liberal Party reactionaries haven’t been able to wreck the Prime Minister’s start to the year.

Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull attend an ecumenical service for the start of the parliamentary year in Canberra this morning. Picture: AP

Rather than being rolled as leader late last year — as predicted by certain reactionary commentators — Malcolm Turnbull has started 2018 with a Newspoll bounce.

His government still trails Labor 48-52 per cent on the two-party vote, but the Coalition’s primary vote is up two points and Turnbull now leads Bill Shorten as the better prime minister by an enlarged 14-point margin.

Even the Prime Minister’s net satisfaction rating — the percentage of voters satisfied with his performance minus those who are dissatisfied — is only minus 13 (compared with Shorten’s minus 18). Given that as recently as November Turnbull was at minus 29, the improvement can’t be ignored.

It turns out the small feedback loop of anti-Turnbull reactionaries in the party and the commentariat haven’t been able to wreck the Prime Minister’s start to the year. But you can bet that they will move into full swing as the year progresses.

Bitter internal divisions persist, and if Turnbull surpasses the dreaded 30 consecutive Newspoll defeats in the months ahead — which will also happen ahead of the budget — doing so will be a momentum killer; which is why the government needs to be mistake-free and press home its advantage against Labor, Shorten in particular.

Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull arrive in Canberra this morning for the parliamentary year. Picture: AAP

The Opposition Leader is performing all sorts of policy contortions to try and retain the seat of Batman at a by-election. And the government is right when it says that he fears more by-elections courtesy of the citizenship saga; especially in the Queensland seat of Longman, where the issues that help Labor in Batman (the Adani backflip) would instead hurt them.

Adding to Shorten’s discomfort is the snapping at his heels from Anthony Albanese, and even his deputy, Tanya Plibersek. Both, according to Newspoll, are more popular leadership alternatives than Shorten.

The risk for Shorten is that if Newspoll gets much tighter his colleagues will get nervous. If they do, his obvious lack of popularity will become a major issue. If the polls shift enough to level up or even see the Coalition move in front, putting an end to the consecutive run of polling defeats for the government, momentum will likely carry Shorten further adrift.

Poor polling becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when a leader is as unpopular as he is. Shorten’s survival relies on staying in front on the party vote.

That said, team Shorten doesn’t need to panic just yet. The government for years now has shown an uncanny ability to self-harm, and Shorten for all his unpopularity has long been good at the politics of positioning himself to maximum effect.

But for the first time in a long time federal politics is looking a little bit less one sided.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics at the University of Western Australia.