Carbon tax will briefly keep Gillard safe

NEXT week in parliament debate on the carbon tax legislation will begin.

Despite Julia Gillard's leadership problems, the expectation remains that it will pass through both houses. While the opposition is still hopeful at least one Labor MP will cross the floor - because of the tight parliamentary numbers, one change of vote is all it would take to scuttle the legislation - that looks unlikely.

There is a great irony in the damage the carbon tax has done to Gillard's leadership at the same time as the size of the achievement passing it into law will be. That irony is extended if you believe, as I do, that passing the carbon tax closes the door on a range of leadership contenders taking over from Gillard to give Labor a better chance at the next election.

The likes of Defence Minister Stephen Smith or other low-profile candidates could never recover Labor's political fortunes after the carbon tax comes into effect. Only Kevin Rudd is a leadership alternative in such circumstances, but switching to him entails embracing baggage the powerbrokers are unprepared for. And it reeks of a change of leader, not a change of culture. But more on that later.

By going back on her election commitment not to introduce a carbon tax, the Prime Minister solidified her fate in voters' minds. Her legitimacy as a leader was already in question courtesy of the way she took over from Rudd and the fact she didn't win a parliamentary majority in her own right in August last year.

After conjuring up another three years by negotiation with the Greens and the independents, voters wanted stability and caution to prove Labor had learned from its first-term bungles. Gillard needed such cautious action to engage with mainstream voters.

Instead, the PM made the judgment that a year of "delivery and decision" was all-important, and committed herself to doing more rather than simply completing what had already been started. This included instituting a carbon tax people clearly don't want.

While Gillard argues passionately that a carbon tax is needed to address climate change, the pleas appear hollow given she convinced Rudd to delay the ETS when he was PM early last year, and she took only a plan for consensus on climate change to the election, not a carbon tax. Remember the people's assembly?

It was the Greens who wanted a carbon tax as part of any alliance deal in government. They were passionate about it and got their way. Gillard was merely passionate about orchestrating the alliance as a way of proving she had parliamentary stability to

help her win over the undecided independents.

Which brings as back to the political achievement of passing a carbon tax in the next few weeks, assuming no one crosses the floor for the Labor Party.

Labor has firm rules about crossing the floor. Unlike in the Liberal Party where doing so harms your career prospects, in Labor it is grounds for expulsion. On the other hand, expulsion from parliament is a near certainty for many Labor MPs if the carbon tax becomes law. When voters have their say the polls suggest they will punish government MPs hard.

Nonetheless, the tribal nature of Labor is such that anyone crossing the floor even on this vote is unlikely. Unless the newly revived DLP - remember it now has a senator in the parliament - manages to carve off new MPs from disaffected ALP lower house members in a 1950s-style revival of its political fortunes, the carbon tax will become law.

Gillard has managed a remarkable feat in the present parliament. She has negotiated her way towards the introduction of a complex transformative piece of legislation soon to be enacted by a minority government supported by rural independents, a Green and a pokies-focused maverick independent out of Tasmania, all the while enduring record low polling.

They say Gillard is good inside the beltway but all of that is quite something. It's a shame the looming political achievement, which even her opponents acknowledge, is also going to be so politically costly for Labor. By knocking out a smooth transition to someone such as Smith, the introduction of the carbon tax locks Labor into either Gillard or a shift back to Rudd further down the track. No cleanskin could assume the leadership tarnished by a legislated carbon tax: the shift would look sneaky and the cleanskin image wouldn't last.

Which means the window for a shift to anyone other than Rudd will close in a matter of weeks if the carbon tax becomes law. Closing also will be the small window for a Labor recovery ahead of the election, unless pride is swallowed and Rudd is considered. But given he has made no effort to improve relations with the powerbrokers who brought him down, it seems the popular alternative to Gillard has learned nothing about mistakes he made first time around.

Gillard's calculations appear to be personal glory not party glory. If she emulates Paul Keating and survives her low personal numbers as he did from September 1993 (when dissatisfaction with him hit 75 per cent) to the March 1996 election (at which Labor won 49 of 148 seats), the ratio of popularity to seats won will also be emulated. And reforms such as the carbon tax will be unwound by Abbott just as John Howard's unpopular Work Choices laws were unwound by Rudd after he won office in 2007.

It will be a Labor disaster.

But if Gillard survives full term she also moves into the top half of longest serving PMs, at number 13 of 27. Personal glory. But not before more hard work holding this unusual government together for another two years.

The messy battles in minority government don't end with the introduction of the carbon tax. Next is the mining tax, which is becoming a fiscal nightmare for Labor as states up their royalties knowing the new super profits tax includes a federal government commitment to rebate royalty increases paid by miners.

Then the poker machine reforms are upon us. Andrew Wilkie expects the reforms to pass the parliament and if they don't he will withdraw support from the government midway through next year. Negotiating those law changes will make the carbon tax look easy, given the concerns already raised by the rural independents and Labor MPs with strong clubs and pubs in their electorates.

Through each of these battles you can expect the PM's popularity to remain low, the party's primary vote will continue to languish and the opposition will be as ferocious as ever. And we haven't even mentioned the NBN, ongoing construction of which will surely yield stories about waste and mismanagement as occurred during the Building the Education Revolution rollout.

Chaos will be the perception throughout all of this, even if the reality includes deft management inside the beltway by the Prime Minister. And much of what is achieved will simply be unwound by the new government when it comes into power.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia.