Turnbull’s turnaround, with a little bit of left-field help

The best thing now going for Malcolm Turnbull is Bill Shorten.

This couldn’t have been said of the race to the bottom three months ago. Indeed Shorten coasted through most of last year believing he had Turnbull’s measure and that the Prime Minister was cactus.

In light of the first Newspoll for 2018, you wouldn’t be popping champagne corks yet if you were the one currently in the Lodge.

The Prime Minister will take the 48-52 two-party preferred vote and run with it but such enthusiasm should be tempered by the simple fact that Labor’s primary vote has not gone backwards and were an election to be held next weekend, then obviously the government would lose.

Any post summer poll also has to be taken in context. All governments historically enjoy a post torpor lift in the polls with voters having been relieved by the absence of politics. Even Julia Gillard got a post- Christmas bounce.

But as any campaign director will tell you, a government going into an election campaign in that position makes for a winnable contest.

Turnbull is a confidence player, as most leaders are, and he will be buoyed by his own personal numbers.

The question is whether there is real momentum there to build on, and if so, is Turnbull capable of seizing it and sustaining it.

There is no doubt that Shorten has come under scrutiny over the past two weeks. It has been scrutiny that perhaps hasn’t been applied to him since the 2016 election and it has exposed a potentially significant problem for the Labor leader.

The perception of a leader who is being dragged further and further to the left by a party commandeered by unionists is one that could stick if Shorten isn’t careful.

This may indeed be what is behind the leakage back to the ­Coalition from One Nation. One Nation reached its peak during the Queensland election when nationally it recorded support of 10 per cent.

This has collapsed to 5 per cent. Almost all of this has gone back onto the Coalition’s ledger.

There are two factors that could be at play. Either the Liberal Party base that abandoned the party because of Turnbull are now less angry with Turnbull than they are scared of Shorten.

Or, in Queensland where One Nation put Annastacia Palaszczuk back into office, voters have perhaps realised that it wasn’t such a good idea.

Turnbull’s ultimate challenge is twofold. He will have to arrest his and the Coalition’s propensity for political calamity.

He must also find a new way to sell his company tax cuts. While the economics may be with him, the politics aren’t. He is exposed on this flank by the populist in Shorten who is well able to exploit the mistrust of big business. As if they are going to take tax cuts and not put them straight into the bottom line, right?

The contest will come down to who can retake mainstream Australia. Turnbull hopes to do this with income tax cuts, Shorten by other means, namely a new minimum wage siphoned from the pockets of the wealthy.

Overall this was a good poll for Turnbull and an uncomfortable one for Shorten, even with the margin of error on the numbers.

But Turnbull should not forget that he is now four polls away from the shadowy spectre of his self-­ ­imposed leadership metric of 30 Newspolls.

If he can start to win the argument on wages and cost of living, and depict Shorten as a raving mad socialist, then none of that will matter. The issues that will decide the next election will be fermented this year and the party that can reconnect with mainstream Australia will be the one to win it.