But an untidy end to the year - marked by legislative defeat, policy confusion, broken promises and a worsening budget position - has seen Mr Abbott's personal approval tank, dropping sharply by 12 points. Shorten's sweet: The opposition leader has leapt ahead of Tony Abbott in the latest Fairfax Ipsos poll. Credit:Stefan Postles Mr Shorten leads convincingly as preferred prime minister on 47 to 39. The Opposition Leader also holds a statistically significant lead over the Prime Minister on six of 11 key attributes including competence, enjoying the support of his party, being open to ideas, being trustworthy and having a firm grasp of social policy. However, Mr Shorten is regarded by voters as more easily influenced by minority groups. Mr Abbott remains ahead on economic and foreign policy competence and on his "vision for Australians' future".

But the poll result will do nothing to ease backbench anxiety at the leadership's inability to make headway with its central economic agenda after a horror first budget. The downward spiral in Canberra has not only sparked calls for a reshuffle and the removal of certain personnel and policy "barnacles", it has prompted Mr Abbott to loosen his grip on his most personal election promise - his proposed paid parental leave scheme. The "gold-plated" $5.5 billion non-means tested proposal is to be given a severe haircut in the new year in an admission that it was inconsistent with the broader message of fiscal restraint, had done significant political damage to the government, and was unlikely to be legislated anyway given a hostile Senate. Illustration: Matt Golding.

However its watering down represents another broken promise - a fact of which Mr Abbott is all too aware. As 2014 winds down, the government's message of policy success over boats and the abolition of the carbon and mining taxes has failed to register against policy shifts, broken promises and deadlocked budget measures such as the GP-fee and university cuts. The result is that Mr Abbott's personal standing has taken a hammering. The Prime Minister's approval rating - the percentage of voters who approve of his performance in the job minus the percentage who do not - dived a precipitate 12 points in just one month to be minus 19 per cent. By contrast Mr Shorten's net approval rating has improved slightly over the same period to be plus 5 per cent. It had been plus 3 per cent in the previous poll a month ago.

The telephone poll of 1401 voters was taken between Thursday and Saturday and has a margin of error of 2.6 per cent. It shows Labor would have been elected comfortably had an election been held over the weekend with 52 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote to the Abbott-led Coalition on 48 per cent based on preference flows at the 2013 election. That is a 5.5 per cent improvement on Labor's share of the vote at the last election when it received just 46.5 per cent after preferences. On the head-to-head question of preferred prime minister, Mr Shorten also now leads decisively by 8 percentage points at 47 to 39. The two leaders had been neck-and-neck on 41-41 just four weeks ago. Labor's primary vote remained unchanged on 37 per cent, which is low historically but still 4 percentage points better than the election result. The Coalition secured 40 per cent of the primary vote in the poll - down 2 points since November and 6 points since the election.

The Greens held steady with a 12 per cent slice of the primary vote, but the drift away from the Palmer United Party continued with the fledgling party scoring just 2 per cent, just a third of the 6 points it peaked at just after the May budget. Voters have marked the Prime Minister's authority down severely with just 53 per cent saying he has the confidence of his party - down 11 points since July Similarly the Prime Minister's perceived ability to make things happen - one of the defining advantages of office - has dropped by 10 percentage points to 48 per cent since July. In a reverse of the normal situation in Australian politics where opposition leaders are regarded as temporary unless they perform, more voters believe Mr Shorten's support within his party has strengthened, rising 8 points since July to be 71 per cent. His perceived openness to ideas jumped 10 points to 68 per cent and more voters marked him favourably for having a vision for Australia's future at 43 per cent, than they had in July when he scored 5 per cent lower on that index.

Coalition morale was speared in November by the loss of the first-term Victorian government, and received another wound on the weekend in a state by-election in the South Australian seat of Fisher. It was a sign of how badly the conservative brand is travelling that a fourth-term ALP government could claim the seat having never held it before. Loading Nationally, Labor's support jumped by 6.5 per cent in the poll if the two-party-preferred vote is calculated according to the stated preference flows from respondents, with the Labor/Coalition split widening to 53/47 - a virtual reversal of the 2013 election result. Follow us on Twitter