will the carbon tax, or refugees kill off Labor first?

A while back I offered my first praise of the Gillard Government see here over her "courage" in arguing for a carbon tax. But since that brief moment of sunshine, not alot has gone right for the Government, and it's all pretty much their own fault.
They're getting killed every day in the media over carbon, but have been completely inept at arguing why we need this tax on carbon so much, and what the benefits will be for all of us. But part of that slow burn has been caused by the lack of detail released which has allowed the dooms dayers to speculate at will at how expensive everything will be, and how many jobs and investment opportunities will be lost etc.
So while even wily commentators like Laurie Oakes have all but written of the Government  read it here , I'm prepared to wait until they release their budget, and release their carbon plan in full before writing their obituary.
But if carbon isn't enough of a bogey man for Labor, their asylum seeker policy is completely up in flames. East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta finally stuck the knife into the whole silly East Timor Processing Centre proposal, an idea that was never going to wash, and only designed to clear the decks for the election.
But Labor really only has itself to blame on this issue, they've been completely spooked by voting suburbia's inherent prejudice to "illegals" since the Tampa incident in 2001. A party with real leadership would argue that asylum seekers are a reality that we need to accept, and as a civilised tolerant country people escaping oppression will want to seek refuge here. And in the great scheme of things it's not really that big of an issue compared with Europe, for example in Greece between 2004 and 2008 the tally of arrested illegal immigrants rose from 44,987 to 146,337, and that's just the ones they caught! But Gillard (and Rudd before her) didn't have the courage to face down the populist chest thumping, and as punishment for their smoke and mirrors routine, they're now well and truly looking down the barrel.
But like I said earlier, I'm prepared to wait a little bit longer before writing them off completely, but to give you an idea of just hard it will be to turn things around, according to Essential Research, 61% of respondents see Labor as out of touch with voters, a devastating figure for a 3 and a half year old Government, and only 28% think Labor is clear on what it stands for. Very ominous numbers indeed.