KEY POINTS:
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will return from his latest overseas trip at the end of the week to a political landscape far less friendly than when Brendan Nelson led the Liberals.
Two polls yesterday showed a marked improvement in the Opposition's standing since former shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull ousted the lacklustre Nelson from the Liberal leadership last week.
The polls also showed a slide in Rudd's own stature, his extended post-election honeymoon a rapidly fading memory as the realities of office begin to weigh the Government down.
Turnbull yesterday announced his shadow Cabinet, headlined by the appointment of women to two of the most important jobs - deputy leader Julie Bishop as shadow treasurer and Helen Coonan, John Howard's communications minister, as foreign affairs spokeswoman.
Bishop and Coonan are the first women appointed to the key portfolios by the main parties, and will add to the new political wind Turnbull intends to blow through Parliament.
Rudd's response was muted by distance yesterday.
He was in New York with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith to address the United Nations General Assembly, exposing himself to Turnbull's bite as the new Opposition team prepared to take on the Government across a broad range of key issues.
Turnbull described Rudd as "prime tourist" for a list of overseas visits that has seen the Prime Minister out of the country for 50 of the just over 300 days he has been in office - almost three times as many as Howard spent abroad in his first year.
Yesterday Turnbull marked the economy as his prime hunting ground, stepping up the pace of an already furious attack on the Government's handling of the global finance crisis.
"Economic management is about a lot more than banks and stock markets and companies," he said. "Economic management is about their homes and the mortgages they have taken out to buy them [and] it is about the savings that represent a lifetime of work and sacrifice."
Turnbull will also give high priority to the environment, water, climate change, a new emissions trading scheme - already a battleground between Government and Opposition, with Rudd pushing through a new scheme against tough political and business resistance - and the nation's groaning infrastructure.
"A growing nation needs greater investment in infrastructure," he said. "But just as there are opportunities for new investment, so there is a risk that an irresponsible and highly political Rudd Government will squander its multimillion-dollar infrastructure funds to prop up floundering Labor state governments."
Turnbull's new team, which has rewarded supporters and punished key Nelson advocates, reflects his priorities.
Bishop will be supported by prominent former Howard minister Joe Hockey as finance spokesman, and Chris Pearce, parliamentary secretary to former Treasurer Peter Costello, as financial services, superannuation and corporate law spokesman.
Former foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb has infrastructure, Nelson supporter Nick Minchin has lost defence but will remain to handle broadband, communications and the digital economy, and Nationals leader Warren Truss has the party's traditional portfolio of trade, plus transport, regional affairs and local government.
Defence has been handed to West Australian Senator David Johnson, climate change, environment and water are retained by Greg Hunt, and Ian Macfarlane is shadow minister for energy and resources.
Ahead of the unveiling of the new line-up, a Nielsen poll in Fairfaxnewspapers yesterday said thatin the wake of Turnbull's election as Liberal leader the coalition's election-deciding two-party preferred vote has risen from 45 per cent to 48 per cent - only 4 per cent behind the Government.
The Sydney Morning Herald said this was the highest share of the two-party vote the coalition had recorded since November 2006, just before Rudd ousted Kim Beazley as Labor Leader.
A Newspoll in the Australian said Rudd's standing as preferred Prime Minister had slipped from a peak of 68 per cent in early August to 54 per cent, with Turnbull recording 24 per cent - well ahead of Nelson's 16 per cent.
Newspoll also showed a marginal improvement in the coalition's two-party vote, at 45 per cent to the Government's 55 per cent.
