Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Labor Party may have benefitted somehow from the cash handouts announced last week in the federal budget in terms of more primary votes. However, the Craig Thomson scandal continues to drag the party.

The latest Newspoll result which was released after Treasurer Wayne Swan announced cash handouts for Australian families who earn less than $150,000 gave a 3 per cent boost to Labor's primary vote to 30 per cent from 27 per cent two weeks ago.

In contrast, the Opposition's primary vote declined by 6 points to 45 per cent. Nevertheless, the Coalition is still ahead of Labor 55-45 in a two-party vote, which experts attribute to the fallout from the Craig Thompson scandal.

To Ms Gillard's relief, her personal approval ratings for her job as prime minister did not go down but remain constant at 27 per cent, similar to Opposition leader Tony Abbott's unchanged 34 per cent personal approval rating.

In another post-budget Galaxy survey commissioned by The Daily Telegraph, almost two thirds of survey respondents believe the Gillard government has not done enough to offset the cost of the carbon tax even if some families would receive up to $600 a year in cash payments on top of the carbon compensation package and tax cuts, Almost 50 per cent of households that earn less than $40,000 annually even expect to be worse off with the carbon tax, the survey said.

However, Mr Abbot was not spared by the voters of whom only 29 per cent said the Opposition would have delivered a better budget.

Mr Abbott said despite the Labor Party saying it has decided to stop paying for the legal fees of Mr Thompson when he crossed the bench he insisted there are enormous issues surrounding the party's payment. He said these issues stem from the Labor party apparently paying for the embattled MP's lawyers even if Ms Gillard was dumping Mr Thompson from the caucus.

A Fair World Australia investigation found Mr Thompson, who used to be the general secretary of the Health Services Union, misused $500,000 in members' funds on cash withdrawals, prostitutes and for his election campaign. Mr Thompson has denied the charges.

Although Mr Thompson has become an Independent MP, he assured the Labor Party of his support. He is scheduled to address the Australian Parliament on May 21.

On Tuesday, Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten said he hoped the embattled MP was receiving personal support amid his problems.

"I'm not here to defend individuals, I want, as the Minister for Workplace Relations, to see the process continued.... But I also can see that anyone, it doesn't matter who you are, a politician or a citizen anywhere, that these matters can cause great strain so year I do hope people are getting human support regardless of the rights and wrongs of their matter," ABC quoted Mr Shorten.

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