Two major opinion polls have Labor maintaining its election-winning lead, with last week’s budget and its centrepiece of $140bn of personal income tax cuts failing to deliver any momentum beyond a bounce for Malcolm Turnbull as preferred prime minister.



The latest Newspoll, published by the Australian on Sunday night, has Labor ahead of the Coalition 51% to 49% on the two-party preferred measure, which is the same result as a fortnight ago. The new survey is the 32nd consecutive loss for the Turnbull government.

The Ipsos poll, published by Fairfax, has Labor with a more commanding lead over the government post-budget. The ALP is ahead of the Turnbull government 54% to 46%.

While both polls suggest Labor would win any federal election held today, continuing a well-established negative poll trend against the Coalition incumbents, there is a morale booster for Turnbull in the Newspoll, with the prime minister pulling ahead of Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister by 14 points, with an eight-point improvement in the past fortnight.

Now that budget week has been cleared, the major parties have moved on to an election footing.

While Turnbull continues to insist the federal election will not be held until next year, both the government and Labor are campaigning on their respective tax offerings ahead of a super Saturday of byelections expected over the next month or so, triggered by the high court’s ruling in the Katy Gallagher case.

Byelections will be held in the seats of Longman, Braddon, Mayo, Perth and Fremantle courtesy of the last chapter of the dual citizenship imbroglio and the resignation of the Labor MP Tim Hammond for family reasons.

A ReachTel poll published on Saturday suggests the Coalition has a chance of snatching back the Queensland marginal seat of Longman, partly because One Nation is polling strongly and won’t direct preferences to Labor.

A war of words has erupted between the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, and the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, with Hanson demanding Labor preference the Greens last, and Shorten declaring Labor will put One Nation last on its how-to-vote tickets because of Hanson’s support for the Coalition’s company tax cuts.

While Labor appears to be in trouble in a seat it won by a handful of votes at the last election, the ReachTel polling shows the company tax cut is very unpopular in the electorate, giving the opposition a negative message it can deploy locally against both the government and Hanson in the coming weeks.

It is possible the Liberals could take back the South Australian seat of Mayo, with the daughter of the former Howard government foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer, signalling she will stand for the seat her father once held, running against the Centre Alliance MP, Rebekha Sharkie.

The Liberals will not field candidates in the byelections in Western Australia.



While the government and the opposition are preparing for fierce battles in the byelection contests, with the outcome of the mini-election important for both Turnbull and Shorten, parliamentary business in Canberra continues.



The Turnbull government is demanding the Senate consider its budget tax package as a job lot, which would lock-in personal income tax cuts for the best part of a decade.

The government has refused to release detailed year by year costings of the income tax plan beyond the forward estimates, arguing the forecasts are too unreliable.

Labor has made the case the government should not ask the parliament to sign up to a seven-year plan without a clear understanding of the costs to the budget once the benefits begin to flow to high-income earners.

Most contentious is the Coalition’s plan to scrap the 37% tax bracket in 2024-25 – a development that would see people earning between $41,000 and $200,000 paying the same marginal tax rate.

The government has support for the first phase of its tax cut plan from both Labor and Senate crossbenchers but faces resistance to its proposal to flatten the tax scales on the basis that it could be unaffordable and the benefits will flow to high-income earners.