Bill Shorten has had a tough start to the week, following a drop in the polls and reports he was involved in a car accident in Melbourne on Sunday.

A spokesman for Mr Shorten’s office confirmed to The New Daily reports that the Labor leader had sideswiped two cars in Carlton.

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He said the car was previously owned by the Opposition Leader’s late mother.

The exact time of the crash was not known, but it occurred before Mr Shorten held a media conference on the Paris attacks in the Melbourne CBD about 12pm.

The crash was first raised publicly by an anonymous caller to Melbourne commercial radio station 3AW who said they came across a “quite a prominent Opposition politician” in the aftermath of an accident.

“On Sunday morning I was doing some gardening, heard a loud bang,” the caller said.

“Went around the corner, noticed a car wedged between the median strip and the parked cars between Rathdowne Street and Drummond Street.”

“[I] noticed the gentlemen who got out of his car quite shaken.

“I asked him what happened? He spilt a short black on his lap and wrote off his car.”

Polls released on Monday and Tuesday did nothing to improve the week of the ALP leader.

Mr Shorten lost 3 per cent against Malcolm Turnbull as preferred Prime Minister in a Fairfax/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday, plunging to a new low of 18 per cent, compared to 21 per cent in October.

A Roy Morgan poll published on Monday put the Coalition ahead of the ALP at 56 per cent to 44 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis.

-with ABC