Since the balance of forces within the Coalition shifted rightwards with the one-vote win by "mad monk" Tony Abbott over Malcolm Turnbull for leader, the media have been wondering whether his line of frenzied warfare against the Rudd Labor government can succeed where the millionaire merchant banker failed.
So far the polls are inconclusive: a January 15-17 Newspoll said the Coalition primary vote has increased to 38% since its October 2009 low of 34%. Over the same period, its two-party preferred vote has risen from 44% to 46%, an improvement but still below the 47.3% that lost them the 2007 election and his seat of Bennelong.
However, Abbott's line of attack — endlessly chanting that Labor's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) represents a "great big new tax" — is already making ALP MPs in marginal seats nervous, especially those based on the coal industry.
Can Abbott's offensive, which already seems to have reinvigorated the Coalition heartland, move on to win back some of the working-class vote ("Howard's battlers") lost to Labor in 2007 because of the impact of the Your Rights at Work campaign?
There's no easy answer to this question. On the one hand, many workers who may have suffered loss of work and wages during the downturn are convinced that things would have been a lot worse without the Rudd government's economic "stimulus packages" — mostly opposed by the Coalition.
On the other hand, many workers in coal-mining and other energy-intensive sectors see the CPRS simply as a threat to their livelihoods. They have been shown no possible alternative sources of work and income, and some are even being won over by climate change denialists such as the Citizens Electoral Council (and their Coalition running dogs such as senators Nick Minchin and Barnaby Joyce).
The Australian Council of Trade Unions' craven support for the CPRS and its complete lack of a serious alternative climate change policy — one that would make workers and their unions the centre of the climate sustainability conversion — has only helped this trend.
The huge concessions the Rudd government made to the carbon polluters in order to seal its failed CPRS deal with Turnbull may have gone some way to placating such workers' fears. But when Rudd relaunches the campaign for the CPRS in February, the fiasco that was Copenhagen will see the government in an even weaker position.
Why should people support a scheme that will guarantee increased carbon emissions, and the main burden will be mostly paid for by the "non-exempt" sectors of the population — working people and small producers?
Federal Treasury says 90% of the population will be properly compensated for price rises resulting from the CPRS, but how can we be sure?
In such a situation, for many people the only reason for supporting Rudd's CPRS will be that the Coalition offers even less.
Abbott boasts that he will offer "an environment policy, not a tax policy". But what can it be when a large minority of its front bench doesn't even believe that human-induced global warming exists?
Given that sort of "choice", combined with the usual pre-election goodies and the predictable ALP head office campaign featuring Abbott as Howard's attack dog and opponent of the economic stimulus packages, a second-term Rudd government still looks pretty likely.
A Labor win also seems probable for the underlying reason that an increasingly large majority of the electorate is to the left of the Coalition, as reflected in Labor's large lead on the two-party preferred vote (54%-46%).
Since the 2007 election, the Greens' support has risen to 12% (from 7.8%), while in New South Wales, advance point of ALP decay, the latest Galaxy poll has the Greens at a record 15%.
Clearly, if the Coalition is ever to win, hundreds of thousands of voters have to be convinced that Abbott and co care about the environment, and pressure is thereby increased on the Greens to drop their usual approach of preferencing Labor.
Enter Abbott the greenie, with a plan for a referendum on federal powers to solve the Murray-Darling crisis (against all Liberal Party tradition and instinct). The real political balance of forces in Australian society is compelling the hard-right "mad monk" to tread the same path as his NSW counterpart Barry O'Farrell — who even irritates big business and its media by occasionally supporting NSW Greens' positions on "development".
But Abbott the greenie has an intractable problem — progress on problems like water is impossible unless integrated into a serious policy on climate change. It will soon become increasingly clear that the Coalition "climate policy", whatever it is, is as futile and inadequate as Labor's.
The electorate's search for a serious climate policy — where the polluters really do pay — must intensify.
We should thank Abbott for his decision to fight Labor over climate policy and how to pay for it. The more those two questions are at the centre of the coming federal election campaign, the greater the chances for real solutions to the climate crisis to be discussed and heard by hundreds of thousands of Australians.
The greater, too, will be the desertions from the major parties that have no answer to either of them.
[Dick Nichols is a member of the Socialist Alliance National Executive former national co-convener of the Socialist Alliance.]