The Coalition government has lost its 29th consecutive Newspoll, trailing Labor 47-53 on a two-party-preferred basis.

It brings the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, closer to the symbolically significant 30th poll which he cited as one of his reasons for toppling Tony Abbott in 2015.

The latest Newspoll of 1,597 voters, published in the Australian, also shows Labor’s primary vote climbing to 39% against the Coalition’s unchanged 37%.



Labor’s first-preference vote has not been as high since Turnbull ousted Abbott in September 2015.

The lift in Labor’s polling comes two weeks after the ALP leader, Bill Shorten, and the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, announced controversial plans to end cash rebates for excess imputation credits.

Labor’s policy has met fierce resistance from investors and Australia’s self-managed superannuation funds, and from the government, with Turnbull claiming that Shorten is “robbing pensioners and retirees of their tax refunds because he has run out of money in the budget”.

Independent economists including Saul Eslake and researchers from the Grattan Institute have branded the attacks on the policy “deeply misleading”.

The Newspoll also comes after Labor won the byelection in the Melbourne seat of Batman on 17 March, a seat it has held for 80 years. It put the former Australian Council of Trade Union president Ged Kearney in federal parliament.

Pollsters asked voters what they thought of Labor’s dividend imputation policy and found just one-third claimed to support it.

But it also found that Shorten’s satisfaction rating has lifted slightly since the last poll, to 34%, putting it two points ahead of Turnbull’s 32%.

Labor’s primary vote is also the highest it has been since Turnbull toppled Abbott.

The treasurer, Scott Morrison, was asked about the poll on Monday morning and tried to downplay the news. “There’s more than a year to go to the next election,” he told ABC radio.

Q&A What is a dividend imputation? Show When companies pay dividends to Australia​n​ shareholders out of after-tax profit, shareholders receive franking credits​,​ a credit against their own tax​ ​bill based on the tax paid by the company. This system,​ which is ​known as​"​dividend imputation​", is unusual – only ​four other countries in the world use it.



However, in 2000​ ​the then treasurer, Peter​ Costello, made the system even more generous to shareholders by allowing them to claim a cash refund if they received more in franking credits than they owe​d ​in tax. Because income from superannuation is tax free for people over 60, high​-income retirees can use franking credits to get a cash "refund" of​ ​more than 40 cents for every dollar they receive in dividends.



The cash payments cost the budget $550m the first year they were paid. The ATO estimates that​ ​the measure cost $4.6​bn​ in 2012-13, and Labor claim​s that abolishing the payments​ ​from 2019​ ​will save $8bn a year.



“But here are the numbers that I think Australians sweat on more than Newspoll: the deficit has been halved, unemployment has fallen from 6.2% to 5.6% during the period you’re referring to, 673,000 Australians have got a job … consumer confidence is up more than 10%, as is business confidence,” he said.

The communications minister, Mitch Fifield, also downplayed the poll.

“Malcolm did mention back in 2015 Newspoll, but there are a number of other things that he mentioned at that time as reason for change in which me and my colleagues in the partyroom wholeheartedly agreed with,” he said.

“The reason why we effected the change in 2015 was because we wanted to win and every electoral outing that Malcolm Turnbull has led us on, we have won.”

Turnbull is still the county’s preferred leader, leading Shorten 39% to 36%.

The Greens’ and One Nation’s primary votes remained unchanged at 9% and 7%, respectively.

Australian Associated Press contributed to this report