Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has played down the latest opinion poll, which shows a dive in his personal approval rating with voters.

Julia Gillard inched one point in front of Mr Abbott as preferred prime minister at 39 per cent compared with his unchanged result in the Newspoll published in The Australian newspaper on Tuesday.

His dissatisfaction rating rose sharply from 54 per cent to 59 per cent and his satisfaction rating fell three points to 31 per cent.

Voter satisfaction with Ms Gillard's performance jumped to a seven-month high, up four points to 31 per cent, while those dissatisfied with the way she's doing her job fell three points to 57 per cent.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/abbott-plays-down-personal-approval-fall-20120904-25bml.html

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he is not fussed about Malcolm Turnbull's forthright comments about the dire state of the Australian public debate, noting that Mr Turnbull was perfectly entitled to express his views and that the Liberals were not a ''Stalinist'' party.
The Coalition's communications spokesman gave a speech in Perth on Wednesday arguing that political debate in Australia had deteriorated to the point where the nation was being besieged by spin, exaggeration and lies, and suffered from a "a deficit of trust".
Mr Turnbull was critical of the climate change debate, while noting that for the past two years in question time ''questions from the Opposition have been almost entirely focused on people-smuggling and the carbon tax''.
He said the limited scope of issues was not a criticism of Mr Abbott or Julia Gillard, but a product of question time in which the Prime Minister was the focus every day.

Despite Mr Turnbull insisting that he was not attacking Mr Abbott in his speech, his comments angered some of his Coalition colleagues.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/turnbulls-speech-interesting-and-elegant-abbott-20120907-25i8u.html#ixzz25k7CbQux

"We are not a Stalinist party," Mr Abbott told Channel Nine.

"What he said was a perfectly reasonable take on current politics. There was a lot of truth in what Malcolm said."

Mr Abbott conceded Question Time was a "bit of a disaster", but he said that was because the Prime Minister and Treasurer did not tell the truth.

And he said the Coalition's focus on border protection issues and the carbon tax had been driven by Labor's incompetence.

"These are the two biggest failures of this government," he said.

"This is a government that has monumentally failed to control our borders - we have had record months for the past two months when it comes to illegal boat arrivals.

"And this is a government which is introducing a bad tax based on a lie, so of course these are the main question time preoccupations."

Liberal frontbencher Joe Hockey has also defended the Opposition's relentless pursuit of the Prime Minister, saying: "We only go for the weakest links".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-07/abbott-defends-question-time-tactics/4248320

I am not sure if Joe Hockey will realise one day that the "weakest" link is... Tony Abbott... 

No matter what dirty crap the Liberals (conservatives) have thrown at Julia Gillard, she's ducked under it, jumped over it or has shown herself as resilient as strong carbon tax fiber... One can argue that things aren't moving fast enough, that dirty coal fired stations have it easy or whatever, but eventually like on most other issues, they are being  ground slowly into the ground to the will of the Venus Æthelflæd of Canberra... Even if she does a back flip or two, it's Tony Abbott who ends up with egg on his face...