A 1.4 per cent swing to the Government from here would return it to the potentially election winning position it was in last July, two months ahead of the disastrous decision to dump Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister.

While the ALP is still ahead Shorten and his colleagues have squandered much of the lead they had built up before the Christmas break.

It needs to be kept in mind that 1.4 per cent is within a standard margin of error, and that one poll on its own does not necessarily indicate a trend.

However, if the results of the poll are repeated in the coming weeks, it will mean Labor has gone from having the 2019 election in the bag to needing to fight tooth and nail.

This will involve defending a problematic negative gearing policy the Coalition says has the potential to crash the housing market, a fraught policy on franking credits and self funded retirees and, of course, border protection.

Last week's "humiliation" of the Coalition on the floor of the House of Representatives has given the conservatives their best Ipsos numbers in almost a year.

While the three per cent bounce was not as large as the five per cent swing to the ALP when Turnbull was dumped last August, it certainly bears comparison. The Morrison government has clawed back four per cent of the support it lost since October.

Morrison is now demonstrably comfortable in his role as the PM. And, more importantly, he seems to have persuaded a goodly portion of the electorate he is up to the job with a 49 per cent approval rating compared to 40 per cent for Shorten.

This is despite his inability to explain why Turnbull had to go.

Shorten's low numbers, which have barely moved in years, suggest that despite holding Labor's top spot since 2013 he hasn't been able to connect.

Whereas the Coalition and the ALP's primary vote was neck and neck at 35 per cent each last October, the conservatives are now well ahead, 38 per cent to 33 per cent. This is within spitting distance of the potentially election-winning result of 42 per cent to 35 per cent last July.

The franking plan, which has been bubbling away on the op-ed pages, has the potential to do Labor harm at the ballot box.

At least 30 per cent of its own supporters are opposed and another 12 per cent find it too confusing to get their heads around - yet.

There will certainly be some realists in the parliamentary Labor Party who are saying if they have any more "wins" like last week's they will be in serious trouble.

Many of these would be MPs from Queensland and the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne where the border security narrative has always played well.

With the Coalition apparently in a place it could only have dreamt of when the parliament adjourned in 2018 only time will tell if this is just a blip or the beginning of a trend.

The one thing we can be sure of though, is that the ugly, negative scare tactics that appear to have worked will be repeated. The closer the election gets the uglier Australian politics, and the race to the bottom to see who can punish asylum seekers the most, will become.