Poll pricks Abbott's Budget bounce

Tony Abbott's popularity has decreased by six points. Photo / AP

Australians appear to have fallen out of love again with Tony Abbott's Government following a brief infatuation in the wake of last month's giveaway Budget, with a new poll reinstating Labor's election-winning lead.

The Ipsos poll for Fairfax Media - which also found that Abbott himself has dropped back down the popularity rankings - suggests that the Government's positions on same-sex marriage and housing affordability have dampened voters' ardour.

Perhaps more worryingly for the Coalition, the two policy realms that normally deliver it the most support - national security and border protection - are failing to arrest the Government's slide or outright damaging its prospects. Ministers are under pressure to explain Australia's reported payment of US$30,000 ($43,062) to a crew of people smugglers recently. And the clumsy insistence by Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey last week that housing is affordable in Sydney and Melbourne has angered many.

Last month, following a Budget designed to please small businesses and working mothers, Ipsos had the Coalition level-pegging with Labor at 50-50. After months of languishing in the polls, that was enough, reportedly, for Abbott to tell his party room that their political fortunes had recovered. That poll put Abbott ahead of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister for the first time in more than a year.

But the latest poll had support for his Government back down to where it had stalled for months: at 47 per cent, six points behind Labor. And Abbott's popularity has decreased by six points, to 41 per cent, one point below Shorten's. Given that Shorten - who has problems of his own, having been called to testify before the Royal Commission into union corruption - has been distinctly lacklustre, the narrow margin is unlikely to give Abbott much joy.

On same-sex marriage, 70 per cent of people disagree with Abbott dragging his feet. Even among Coalition voters, 57 per cent back marriage law reform. On property prices, only 29 per cent agree that housing is affordable. In Sydney that figure drops to 18 per cent.

Last week, Hockey advised would-be home buyers in an overheated property market that has far outpaced wages growth to get "a good job ... [that] pays good money". Abbott then strained credulity by claiming that he had "over the years felt a bit of mortgage stress ... even as a Cabinet minister".

The Government probably hoped to win brownie points by talking tough on national security, with its move to introduce legislation stripping terrorism suspects with dual nationality of their Australian citizenship. Plans to empower the Immigration Minister to decide who loses their passport, based on evidence not tested in court, have prompted a backlash not only in the community but from at least five Cabinet ministers. And Abbott's repeated refusal to deny that Australian Customs officers paid people smugglers to turn a boat around and take it back to Indonesia has raised all manner of legal and moral questions, and left Australians scratching their heads. Labor has asked the federal Auditor General to investigate whether public money was used to fund criminal activity.