A poll which shows Labor in front just three months after the election shows Australians are not getting the government they voted for, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says.
The Fairfax Nielsen poll shows the coalition has lost the support it enjoyed leading up to the September 7 poll, while Labor has bolted out of the gates.
On a two-party preferred basis, Labor has made ground and now leads the coalition 52-48 per cent - the first time it's been ahead of the coalition for three years.
Mr Shorten said the poll showed the coalition were acting differently after the election to how they said they would before it.
"This is a government that people were not told they would be like," he told reporters in Melbourne on Monday.
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He said the government had promised before the election it would buy boats and now it was hiding them and had promised to reduce debt, but was increasing it.
The poll also showed that 57 per cent of people wanted Labor's carbon tax repealed, but just 12 per cent of voters believe Prime Minister Tony Abbott's "direct action" policy of buying emissions reductions from polluters with taxpayers' money, while planting trees, is the answer.
"What we have seen is very little support, very little support, for the coalition's expensive white elephant called direct action, most people don't know what it is and those who do, don't like it," Mr Shorten said.
He said the public backed Labor's approach of repealing the tax and replacing it with an effective climate change solution.
