Prime Minister Tony Abbott doesn’t usually thank the ABC, but today he found cause to lay praise for their political three-parter that has exhumed the disarray of the Rudd-Gillard power struggle.

On Tuesday’s episode, the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was labelled “untrustworthy” by his colleagues and was kept away from the Industrial Relations ministry as it would “solidify” his power with unions, the Killing Season revealed.

On Wednesday during question time, Mr Abbott said: “I want to say publicly thank you to the ABC. Thank you to the ABC. I don’t normally say thank you to the ABC, but I have to say Australia is indebted to you on this instance,” he said, referring to the political mini-series.

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• The Killing Season: how a dream team imploded

Bill Shorten had to sit across the chamber and weather the storm. Photo: AAP

One of the key advisors to Julia Gillard, Gerry Kitchener, told the ABC that after the 2010 leadership changeover Ms Gillard was advised by Mark Arbib not to give Mr Shorten a job.

“And then he came down to Bill Shorten’s name and he said that you couldn’t trust Bill Shorten, that he would do Julia in, that the one thing she couldn’t do was ever give him industrial relations cause he’d use it to solidify the union base to knock her off,” Mr Kitchener said.

In the current climate, the PM has a bit to gain from any unsolicited character assassination of his opponent.

Newspoll on Monday showed the government trailed the opposition on two-party preferred 51-49 per cent, reflecting a similar position to other polls.

The Morgan Poll has shown the government has been stubbornly placed behind the opposition since the beginning of 2014.

The latest Morgan poll released on Monday showed Labor was ahead of the Coalition 54.5– 45.5 per cent.

And the Ipsos-Fairfax Poll released on Sunday showed a drastic 53-47 per cent two party preferred vote to Labor.

Prior to the 2013 election Mr Abbott famously promised not to make any cuts to the ABC’s funding, but later in November 2014 the government slashed $254 million from the national broadcaster.