Labor remains ahead of the Turnbull government in a Newspoll published as federal parliament is set to resume for 2018, but Malcolm Turnbull continues to be the voters choice as preferred prime minister.
The latest Newspoll at the opening of the 2018 political year has Labor ahead on the two party preferred measure 52% to the Coalition’s 48%. Last week’s Guardian Essential poll had Labor ahead 54% to 46%.
Turnbull remains ahead of the Labor leader Bill Shorten on Newspoll’s preferred prime minister measure, 45% to 31%, which is a four-point boost for the prime minister since the last poll.
Parliament resumes this week after the summer hiatus. The Turnbull government trailed Labor on the two-party preferred measure in every Guardian Essential poll in 2017.
The major parties have opened the new political year by talking about hip pocket issues, with Labor zeroing in on the lack of wages growth, and the government flagging personal income tax cuts.
Labor over the coming weeks will be preoccupied with a byelection in the Melbourne seat of Batman, triggered by the resignation last week of the Labor MP David Feeney, who could not prove he was eligible to sit in parliament.
Labor will struggle to hold the electorate in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, with the Greens launching an offensive to take a seat which would deliver it a strategic lower house bloc of two.
The opposition is also building up to a policy shift on the controversial Adani coal mine, which is a major issue in inner city Melbourne.
The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, continued toindicate a hardening of Labor’s position on Adani on Sunday night, telling the ABC he was becoming increasingly sceptical about the project.
He noted that banks didn’t seem to be interested in financing the mine. “I think commercially the deal has a lot of hairs on it,” Shorten said.
As well as the commercial challenges, Shorten said the climate change implications of the project had to be considered. “On climate change, is this the time to be building the largest deal in the southern hemisphere?” he asked.
Earlier on Sunday, the Turnbull government said the project would not receive federal funding from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility for a vital rail line, because the Queensland Labor government had vetoed the proposed loan.
Adani has sought a $900m concessional loan for rail to link the Carmichael mine to the port – and the lack of government support could spell the end of the project entirely if it can’t secure private finance.
Shadow ministers are considering a range of legal and other options on Adani, including inserting a “climate trigger” in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which could allow a retrospective and negative assessment of the project in the event Labor wins the next election.
It is also possible action could be taken under the existing regime using deterioration of the Great Barrier Reef as a trigger for reassessment.
But there are administrative complications. If Labor ends up adopting the hardline stance Shorten is currently telegraphing, it will need to be communicated in a way which doesn’t suggest prejudgment of the Adani case, given the likelihood that the company would contest the process.
The government believes it is over the worst of last year’s dual citizenship imbroglio, and has been focusing on the Labor MP Susan Lamb, building pressure on Shorten before the resumption of parliament.
On Sunday, Turnbull declared Shorten should make Lamb follow Feeney and resign from parliament because she was a dual citizen.
The prime minister also rejected arguments that one of his own MPs, the Liberal Jason Falinski, was in a similar position to Lamb.
Labor has taken advice from a Polish expert which suggests Falinski remained a Polish citizen by descent because his father entered Australia on a Polish passport.
“What Labor is trying to do is they want to pursue the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, like Jason Falinski, they want to ... muddy the waters through the vagaries of central European citizenship law – and they have, sitting in the parliament right now, Susan Lamb, the member for Longman, who, on her own legal advice, states that she is a citizen of the United Kingdom,” Turnbull told the ABC.
