With Julia Gillard’s carbon price finally locked in, several questions in national politics can be pared back to one suggesting Tony Abbot’s enviably straight run toward the 2013 election might require a tack or two.
So what is this “big question”?
It centres on the single most important difference around which Tony Abbott has constructed his strategy and it goes something like this: will the carbon price lose its current locomotive power in Australian politics and come to resemble a Medicare-slash-GST phenomena, or will it remain where it is now, more akin to say, the toxicity of WorkChoices?
That is, will it outrun the extreme divisions it has engendered to eventually attract the broad if grudging support of both parties? Or on the other hand, will it continue to fester, functionally inseparable from the perceived “lie” and the rallying point for the throngs of should-be Labor voters whom the Abbott bandwagon has swept up.
The answer to this question holds the key to Julia Gillard’s fate as Prime Minister, and indeed whether Tony Abbott will ever get there.
Ms Gillard’s game-plan has always been founded on the former trajectory. She has made no secret of her determination to have this parliament run its full three year term and some - leaving the election timing unambiguously as late as constitutionally practical: to wit, the second half of 2013.
Her logic is rudimentary. It holds that the carbon price will cause nothing like the economy-shattering world-ending disruption to peoples’ lives that Mr Abbott has led them to believe. Thus, once they’ve enjoyed the tax cuts and pension increases, which for battlers will more than offset any higher power bills they incur, they will lose their anger, and realise it was the fear-mongering that was radical, not the advent of a carbon trading market.
Much of Ms Gillard’s confidence is predicated on Treasury modelling which predicts household electricity prices will jump by a tiny amount (0.9 per cent) as a result of generators being charged for pumping out carbon dioxide. There will be other costs too as the carbon price is handed on down, but the net effect on the economy according to the best modelling is going to be extremely minor.
Assuming this is how it pans out - and there are some big assumptions here to be sure - the election when held, will have come nearly two years after the legislation was passed and comfortably more than a year after the household compensation package began flowing, bearing in mind that it starts a couple of months before the carbon price operates.
Committed conservatives and Gillard-haters will obviously maintain their rage but they were never in her camp anyway. They will continue to hammer the so-called carbon tax lie and will attempt to keep others outraged too.
But whipping up fear of something coming is easier than maintaining fear of something already here and being lived with. Again, think of the GST. Kevin Rudd once branded the day of its introduction as fundamental injustice day. Who’d unpick it now?
Besides, if all the people who claim they were swayed by Ms Gillard’s no-carbon-tax pledge before the election had actually been swayed, as their heartfelt betrayal suggests, she probably would have won with a majority in her own right.
Of course, on the evidence now, the WorkChoices parallel is a better one than Medicare or the GST. Electricity bills have been soaring over the last 24 months or so - 48 per cent in SA for example - and voter anger over this is genuine and widespread.
The Opposition’s claim that now is not the right time to add to the misery will find its mark in voterland, what with households cash-strapped and job security declining. Fear trumps hope as they say in politics.
Even more important though is that prices are predicted to continue rising so if Mr A can link your worsening bills to Ms Gillard’s tax, he’s on a likely winner even if it is not strictly true.
That strategy is not risk-free, though. Blood oaths to rescind and oppose certainly attract attention but not all of it is good. By keeping it simple and negative, it plays into the Dr No narrative Labor has been steadily building.
As we approach the half way mark of this term of office, there is an almost palpable sense of the wind shifting. Tony Abbott and his muscular band of new conservatives would do well to pick it and perhaps change tack.
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