Mr Rudd's approval rating with voters dropped four points to 50 per cent, the closely-watched Newspoll in the Australian newspaper showed, while new Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull lifted conservative approval by 8 points to 24 per cent in only a week.

'The polls are certainly encouraging in the very earliest part of Malcolm Turnbull's leadership, but what they point to is that the public have woken up to the Rudd Government and its inadequacies,' Conservative spokesman Christopher Pyne told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Rudd's centre-left Labor ended almost 12 years of conservative rule with a sweeping election victory in November as Australian's battled soaring inflation and house prices set against successive interest rate hikes.

But the election last week of high-profile former merchant banker and Australian republican movement leader Turnbull to lead the major opposition Liberal Party has brought the conservatives within striking range of Labor for the first time in a year.

Australia is not due to hold fresh elections until late 2010.

Newspoll had Turnbull's conservatives trailing the government 45-55 when voter preferences were distributed to the two major parties.

A rival Nielsen poll in Fairfax papers showed an even closer gap with the government ahead 52-48 on a two-party basis, and the conservatives in their best position since late 2006, when Mr Rudd's march to victory first began.

'First crack in impregnable Castle Rudd,' said the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.

Mr Turnbull, a former head of investment bank Goldman Sachs Australia, was seen as better able to handle the economy, leading Mr Rudd 43 points to 41, but was seen by 61 per cent of Newspoll respondents as arrogant, against Mr Rudd's 47 per cent.

Both polls showed support for Mr Rudd was still strong, despite dropping well off record highs of close to 70 per cent a year ago, with 54 per cent of Newspoll's 1,148 respondents still seeing him as the better prime minister. -- REUTERS