The Abbott government has suffered a slump in opinion polls a week out from its first budget when voters have been warned to expect across-the-board pain.



Labor's lead over the Coalition has strengthened to 53%-47% after preferences, according to the Newspoll published in the Australian on Tuesday.

The newspaper said the five-point drop in the Coalition's primary vote to 38% was the largest single fall since Julia Gillard announced her carbon tax plans in early 2011, and support for the Coalition was at its lowest level in almost four years.

A separate ReachTEL poll published on Monday put Labor's two-party lead at 54% to 46%, while the latest Morgan poll put the lead at 55% to 45%.

They follow a Galaxy poll published in News Corp’s Sunday papers which put the two-party split at 52% for Labor to 48% for the Coalition, with 72% agreeing with the proposition that a mooted “deficit tax” for higher income earners would represent a broken promise.

The Liberal-National Coalition attracted 53.5% of the two-party-vote at the September election.

The Newspoll of 1,143 voters between Friday and Sunday showed a big drop in satisfaction with Tony Abbott's performance as prime minister since the last poll nearly a month earlier.

In this time satisfaction with Abbott declined five points to 35%, while dissatisfaction rose nine points to 56%. This produces a net approval rate of minus 21%, compared with minus 7% on 4-6 April.

Over the same period, Bill Shorten's net satisfaction rating as opposition leader improved from minus 11% to minus 6%. He was preferred prime minister by 38% of those polled, nearly level with 40% for Abbott. Newspoll had a 3% stated margin of error.

The Newspoll showed a 10-point decline in the Coalition's support among people aged over 65 years and six-point drop in the age group 50 to 64, coinciding with debates over increasing the pension age and changes to entitlements.

"What we did notice was a fairly stronger effect among older voters, so it would be fairly safe to assume that [the] pension age, the issues around the family home going into the calculations for pension entitlements and possibly the Medicare co-payment, all of which have been talked about but yet to be announced in the budget, probably would affect older Australians," the Newspoll chief executive, Martin O'Shannessy, told the ABC on Tuesday.

Abbott sought to play down the government’s opinion poll slump on Monday, saying the budget would be framed in a fair way.

He dismissed claims of a broken promise over the proposed deficit levy, saying the “most fundamental commitment of all was to get Labor's debt and deficit disaster under control”.

“No one likes difficult decisions – governments don’t like taking difficult decisions, voters don’t like the consequences of difficult decisions – but you’ve just got to make hard decisions at a time like this, otherwise our country is doomed to years of economic stagnation,” Abbott told the Nine Network.

“I think in the long run, the voters will thank us for doing what is absolutely necessary if Labor’s debt and deficit disaster is to be tackled.”

Shorten said Abbott’s first major economic statement was “shaping up to be a budget of broken promises and twisted priorities” including increased income taxes and “a new GP tax for the sick”.

“And yet Tony Abbott has said today that Australians should be thanking him for these problems – for the extra pressure on families, the extra taxes, the extra fears which pensioners now have,” Shorten said.

“Prime minister, Australians will not be thanking you for your broken promises.”