This Sunday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard will conclude what ABC journalist Annabel Crabb has described as its policy striptease over pricing carbon. After months of acrimonious public debate in which even scientists and economists copped stray punches, the Federal Government will finally detail the carbon scheme formulated by the multiparty climate change committee.
At this stage, the legislation is expected to pass both houses of Parliament. So why is Gillard taking the unusual step of making a statement on national television this weekend, followed by a five-week sales pitch during the parliamentary winter break?
Well, why wouldn't she? This is the fight of her political life.
No Greek tragedian could have written such a delicious twist. After reportedly convincing Kevin Rudd to defer the (flawed) Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, then stating at the 2010 election that she would not introduce a carbon tax, Gillard is now staking her government on a climate change policy that few completely understand and many resent.
She needs to successfully prosecute it if her government is to withstand further assaults from the Opposition regarding its 'mandate'. She also needs to insulate the public from the pro-industry ad campaigns that will surely hit television screens soon.
The carbon tax is a complicated sell. The main question people are asking, 'Will I be worse off?', does not have a brief, reassuring answer. Any emissions reduction scheme worth implementing is bound to hurt. It is no surprise that public discourse has focused on exemptions and compensations.
This is appropriate to a degree. The cost of any economic reform must be justified when its benefits are unclear in the public mind. People are likely to see initial price increases, before emissions-based price differentiation starts shifting them toward cheaper products that happen to be less-polluting.
With Treasury anticipating a blowout in the first couple of years of implementation before the scheme becomes budget neutral, it is not voter-friendly policy.
What gets obscured in all this is the idea that there is scientific and economic consensus around carbon reduction as a legitimate response to climate change. Markets around carbon credit are already being created in Europe and Asia. Gillard has had to contend with a sideshow debate on anthropogenic climate change that other world leaders have not.
In fact there is nothing radical about fixing a carbon price as the precursor to an emissions trading scheme. It provides a concrete, stable base from which a market can be built. (It