An overwhelming majority of voters support Kevin Rudd's drive to tackle climate change and 77pc believe Australia should press ahead and cut its greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what other countries do.
The latest Herald/Nielsen poll, the first since last week's green paper on a proposed emissions trading scheme, finds that Australians are willing to pay the price for cutting carbon emissions, even though most do not understanding how the scheme will work.
When informed that greenhouse gas abatement would cause the price of goods and services to increase, 68pc said they were prepared to pay more while 24pc were opposed.
But as the Government started a multimillion-dollar "awareness" campaign on its climate action last night, the poll found six of every 10 voters either slightly understood or had no understanding at all of the emissions trading scheme.
However, two-thirds still supported introducing a scheme.
The poll of 1400 voters was taken from Thursday to Saturday. On Wednesday, the Government released its green paper outlining how a domestic emissions trading scheme would work.
In the preceding week, the Coalition was split over climate change. Its leader, Brendan Nelson, contradicted senior colleagues by saying Australia should do nothing until other big polluting countries acted.
Only 19pc of respondents to the poll agreed with this course of action.
The poll finds the Government about as popular now as it was at the election. On a two-party-preferred basis, Labor leads by 54pc to 46pc and, on primary votes, by 43pc to 40pc.
Both show small shifts to the Opposition since last month's poll but the movements are within the margin of error and not enough to give the Opposition great heart.
Mr Rudd's approval rating remains relatively unchanged at 66pc compared with 36pc for Dr Nelson.
Mr Rudd leads Dr Nelson as preferred prime minister by 65pc to 20pc, a 3-percentage point drop.
With climate change policy full of political risk, 54pc are satisfied with the way Mr Rudd is handling the matter while 38pc are unhappy.
The Government will welcome the findings as it is battling an increasingly hostile Opposition and corporate sector.
"These findings suggest clear support for the Government's climate change policy," the Nielsen research director, John Stirton, said.
However, last month's poll showed 78pc wanted the Government to intervene over petrol prices and Mr Stirton said this gave "food for thought about the real depth of support for a tough policy on climate change".
Last night the Government launched its taxpayer-funded advertising campaign to promote awareness of the proposed trading scheme.
Labor had been critical of the Howard government's political advertising but the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, said this campaign would adhere to new guidelines that require the auditor-general's approval.
The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said: "We want to have a very mature conversation with the Australian people about this because big economic reforms like this are not cost-free."
The shadow treasurer, Malcolm Turnbull, said Labor was rushing when "great care and deliberation" were needed to protect industry and households.
He suggested the Coalition would oppose gradually reducing total emissions allowed under the scheme until other countries cut theirs.
Email a friend
Favourites
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Digg
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Reddit
Newsvine
LinkedIn
Kwoff