Oooh, there's a surprise

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She said we wouldn't have it in this parliament and has upset a lot of people by reneging on that promise, and even those in favour of a carbon tax (bearing in mind what I said yesterday) must secretly be aware that a Prime Minister who goes back on their word cannot really be trusted. I can't imagine the same thoughts have not occurred to Gingery Dullard herself, so it's not really much of a surprise that she's less than keen on an early election to try to get a mandate for the tax. Her personal approval rating was already down to 29% (with 62 disapproving) last week before the carbon tax details were announced, so she probably would be punished at the polls and she must know it. Why the hell would she call an election?

Her best hope is to leave it as long as possible and hope that the voters' memories are short and that the recycling aspect of the tax - that is, recycling money taken from so-called 'polluters', who naturally pass the costs on to the paying public, into bribes cuts and benefits for the paying public so they don't feel the effect of the higher bills - works in her favour. Perhaps it will, but of course it does rely a lot on those not-bribes being enough to avoid the pain of raised costs. It strikes me that it might not if some of those companies spot an opportunity to increase margins by using the confusion of expected price rises to increase prices a little more than is needed. And not if the estimates of the adjusted value of those not-bribes blogged over at Thoughts on Freedom the other day are reasonably accurate. If both of those happen then the pain of the carbon tax will be impossible to hide and there will be no doubt about who to blame. In that case Julia's best hope resides in one man.

Ladies and gents, the leader of the opposition, Tony 'Mad Monk' Abbott

Yes, Tony Abbott, who also professes to be of the warble gloaming faith and have plans to control the climate according to the prophecies of the Goracle, though quite what his 'Direct Action' plan involves is not entirely clear beyond that he thinks planting trees and giving grants is a good idea. How many trees and how much in grants and to whom is not easy to find out, but in short it sounds rather like an Abbott government would take it upon itself to pick winners in much the same way as Labor do. This is because, as I have bitched about more than once, the Liberals aren't really any more liberal than Labor.

Not only that but the odd Abbott related PR gaffe isn't exactly unheard of, even if it's sometimes a gaffe that's been manufactured out of nothing and out of context by a Labor-philic media. Perhaps Julia is hoping for more of the same before calling an election? She might be lucky but if so Tony'll need to do something spectacularly outrageous to give an unpopular PM leading a minority government a majority at the next election. Who knows, elaborating on his own carbon tax plan might do it.

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, folks: a pair of total tools whose only saving grace seems to be that each looks good when compared with the other. Picking between them is like picking between, oh, say, Cameramong and Gordon Brown. You sure as hell want one gone but you're not really all that keen on having the other one in to replace them.

'Kinell.