Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has lost his 30th straight opinion poll. This is a benchmark he used to justify deposing former Liberal leader Tony Abbott.
Abbott was toppled in a September 2015 party room coup with Turnbull memorably citing his loss of 30 consecutive Newspolls in The Australian newspaper as the key reason why he had to go.
Mr Turnbull admits he would have liked to take back his comments.
"I mean I regret making those remarks at the time, making remarks about 30 newspolls at the time. But what I promised to do was to provide economic leadership and traditional cabinet government. And I've done both."
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, we should not obsess over polls. He has urged the government to focus on low power prices and scaling back immigration.
"We shouldn't obsess over polls. I never did. I don't think that others should. What we should be focused on is being the best possible government and winning an election. We should be the party of low power prices and that means more coal-fired base load generation in this country. We should be the party of higher wages and more affordable housing and that means scaling back immigration. So that's what I think we need to focus on today, being the best possible Government with the strongest possible policies."
Opposition leader Bill Shorten says the Prime Minister needs to focus less on newspolls and more on policy.
"I'm not like Mr Turnbull. I don't define my success or, indeed, my job by what Newspoll does. I actually think the Australian people want us to focus less on polls and personalities and a lot more on what we do for the people. It's Mr Turnbull who said that 30 Newspolls is a definition of success. That's his problem. I actually think most Australians want to see politics move beyond the polls and the personalities, to what are we going to do for the people?"
Listen to the report (in Bangla) in the audio player above.
