Captain Combet prepared to go down

Eric Lobbecke

GREG Combet has committed Labor to a bold and brave strategy through to the next election and beyond. Like a defiant Captain Ahab being dragged down with his Moby Dick nemesis, beckoning and cursing his damned crew and ship even after death, the Climate Change Minister has committed Labor, if defeated, to defy Tony Abbott's repeal of the carbon tax.

Tall, dark and aquiline, a bearded Combet would not look completely unlike Gregory Peck's Hollywood depiction of the obsessed sea captain who's dragged to his death by Herman Melville's great white whale and continues his call to battle beyond death.

Combet has decided to stand on principle over the carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme and declared that even if the government is defeated at the next election the ALP will use its position in the Senate with the Greens to stymie Coalition attempts to repeal the carbon tax.

Regardless of Coalition claims for a mandate to repeal a carbon tax that the Opposition Leader has campaigned for over three years, Combet has committed Labor to whatever obstruction it can provide in the Senate, to the point of forcing a double-dissolution election over the tax.

In a series of media interviews this week, in the build-up to the introduction of the world's highest, economy-wide carbon tax from July 1, Combet was adamant an election loss would not change Labor's principled position on a carbon price to combat global warming.

"In politics you've got to stand up for what you believe in. And this has been Labor policy for years now. Having a price on carbon, through an emissions trading scheme arrangement. That's what we're implementing," he told ABC radio.

Expressing frustration with Labor's previous failures with an emissions trading scheme Combet said:"We tried to do it in the last parliament and were defeated. We're doing it again. It's legislated. It's coming into effect and most importantly, at the end of the day, Australia needs to make this change."

While he was "standing up" for principle Combet was also reinforcing a Labor political strategy to play on doubts and scepticism that Abbott can ever deliver his "blood oath" promise to repeal the carbon tax.

Labor's approach is to try to neutralise Abbott's exploitation of public anger and resentment about the carbon tax by "Abbott-proofing" as much of the tax as it can and undermine voter confidence that the Coalition can ever deliver on its biggest promise. Given the earlier start date, a full year before an election can be called for the Senate, the extensive legislated household and industry compensation and general public cynicism towards all politicians and taxes, Abbott already faces huge logistic and political challenges in delivering on this key promise.

That's Combet's political intent. But Combet's declaration that Labor will die in a ditch to oppose the repeal of the carbon tax has its own political challenges and contradictions.

Labor and Julia Gillard are in such dire political straits because of the carbon tax and all the betrayal and arrogant dismissal that went with it. The issues that have damaged the government and the Prime Minister are both visceral and politically sophisticated relating to trust in election promises and a government's mandate. Gillard promised there would be no carbon tax, Labor did not seek a mandate for a carbon tax at the 2010 election, Abbott and the Coalition campaigned against a carbon tax, Labor's emissions trading scheme was defeated in the Senate three times in 2009-10, Kevin Rudd abandoned the scheme in early 2010 at the urging of Gillard and Wayne Swan, and yet Labor embraced a carbon tax in February last year.

Combet's declaration of principle throws back into the public's face all of the main reasons for resentment and anger towards Gillard and her government while arguing the carbon tax is necessary and must be kept no matter what the public thinks.

As an election strategy Combet's argument to the public that it doesn't matter how they vote they will still have a carbon tax is the reverse gambit Paul Keating used in 1992 against John Hewson's proposed goods and services tax.

In a surprise to his colleagues the then prime minister declared a defeated Labor Party would not oppose a Coalition government's GST and told Hewson : "If the people elect you, the GST will get up and if the GST gets up it will be the biggest attack on living standards in modern times".

"If the people vote for you they will get it as surely as someone will get influenza from standing in the cold. They will get it," Keating warned.

Keating's bold and brave declaration was also based on principle but had a clearer and more direct political strategy than Combet's message that even if you throw us out we will defy your will and fight to keep the carbon tax.

Keating's argument was that a defeated Labor Party would not frustrate the people's will, recognise the Coalition's mandate on GST and not use the Senate to obstruct democratic outcomes.

The political message was that voters couldn't elect a Hewson government in the House of Representatives and then rely on Labor and the Democrats to block or modify the GST.

The Democrats were arguing that the government could change but a vote for them in the Senate could be used take the worst out of the GST.

Keating threatened: "We are making it abundantly clear that even though we regard it as an inequitable and vile tax that attacks the living standards of all Australians, if the Australian electorate, because we are first and foremost democrats, in the unhappy event, gives you a majority in the House of Representatives for it, the Labor opposition in the Senate will not obstruct its passage.

"We will not stand in the way of public opinion and Australian electoral mandates," he said. "You have it branded on you, just as though you had turned up to a cattle branding. I am quite sure that branded on you are the letters GST."

Keating, who had earlier championed a GST, was combining principle and politics to hold out the full, unadulterated fear of Hewson as a "feral abacus" without check if the people gave him a democratic mandate at the election.

Combet is arguing that Labor will force a carbon tax, introduced without a mandate, to be kept by a government, elected with a mandate to remove it, on the basis this is what Labor believes and that the public is sceptical about Abbott's ability to repeal it.

Keating's was a lucid, rallying cry to battle ahead of the election which contributed to Hewson losing the unloseable election while Combet's seems to be a self-destructive act of a government preparing for defeat.