By Phillip Coorey
Today will be one of those character forming days for the government.
The welfare sector, unions, industry and manufacturing all variously crying foul over the carbon tax and another poll showing the government still as popular as cold sores.
Greg Combet's announcement last week that compensation for the carbon tax would be so generous that some people would actually be better off has done nothing to lift support for a price on carbon. If anything, opposition has hardened.
Even the government's admirable drive to balance the budget by 2012-13 is not lighting up the world.
The poll shows 61 per cent think it an important objective ''but it can wait a couple of years''.
And despite his treachery on Q&A two weeks ago, Kevin Rudd, himself as popular as cold sores this time last year, is now preferred by 55 per cent of voters as prime minister, compared with 38 per cent for Julia Gillard.
On the other side of the fence, Malcolm Turnbull is streets ahead of Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott as preferred Coalition leader.
Turnbull is vastly more popular among Labor and Green voters than Coalition voters. In a three-horse race against Hockey and Abbott, Turnbull has the support of 54 per cent of Labor voters.
In a two-horse race against each other, Gillard and Rudd have 49 per cent of the Labor vote apiece. Labor voters want Turnbull, something which will be handy for Turnbull should the Coalition find itself battling to win the soft Labor vote as the next election nears.
At the moment, however, Abbott would win in a canter based on these figures.
The great hope in Labor was that after the voters took their baseball bats to the Keneally government at the NSW election, the hostility towards federal Labor would ease. Instead, voters still have their bats in hand and are keen for another swing.
In NSW the poll shows primary support for the Coalition at 51 per cent and 27 per cent for Labor, results almost identical to the state election. That's called brand damage.
Labor sages have warned since the last federal election that turning the polls around will be a long haul and they will remain this miserable for the ALP until at least next year.
The danger in the interim is that the damage will become irreversible because people will stop listening.