In any endurance sport, punters are unlikely to put money on a prime minister who swans around the nation in the back of a limousine over an opposition leader who annually pedals his way from Melbourne to Sydney for charity.
But if you believe recent Canberra gossip, Julia Gillard is spruiking her ''long game'' strategy that will reconnect her electorally with the western suburbs of Sydney and the entirety of Queensland.
And what's the central thesis to Gillard's argument? That public opinion concerning her carbon tax will turn once the tax is implemented and supported by generous taxpayer funded compensation. Then, the heat will be turned back onto Abbott and any plans to roll back the tax.
But Labor has made a core strategic error if, as identified by the Australian's Dennis Shanahan, it is ''implement[ing] a political strategy to once and for all deal with climate change as an issue and implement a carbon price''.
Unlike Gillard, John Howard had a tax he was happy to sell. It simplified fiscal arrangements, was truly revenue-neutral and didn't go up annually.
But introducing a carbon tax won't put the screaming baby safely to bed. On 1 July 2012, Gillard's carbon tax will be born at a likely weight of $20 per tonne of emissions and will celebrate its first birthday a year later with a rate growth spurt expected to be around 4 per cent plus 2 per cent CPI, taking it to $21.2 per tonne.
And at each carbon tax baby's birthday the rate compounds, so by age two it has already grown to nearly a hefty $22.50 per tonne.
Consequently, in the weeks leading up to the likely August 2013 poll, Gillard will have the awkward task of explaining that her broken ''no carbon tax under a government I lead'' commitment won't be replicated when she argues ''carbon tax compensation will increase every year''.
It begs the question of how taxpayers will vote after being fooled that Labor took the morning after pill once, let alone twice.
For the past few months Gillard and her climate change minister, Greg Combet, have quietly dropped revenue neutrality as part of their carbon tax narrative. It's likely they have finally realised paying off nine out of ten households, trade-exposed industries and electricity generators won't fit neatly into the $11 billion they'll collect in the first year.
The window of public support has also snapped shut. The latest Lowy poll into Australian foreign policy attitudes shows the public's support for cutting emissions has collapsed from 75 per cent in 2007 to a mere 46 per cent this year.
In part, the government is paying the price for Kevin Rudd's claim that the Howard government's failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol was the barrier to taking action on climate change. Rudd's support for ratifying the failed treaty was symbolism over substance, and left the Australian public unprepared for the true cost of emissions reduction.
Similarly unrealised hysterical ''scientific'' claims about climate change's impact and misleadingly rosy rhetoric about the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference have further eroded public trust. The lack of international political and economic will to cut emissions can only continue to harm the Gillard government's claims.
The recent Productivity Commission report concluded that Australia is carrying high carbon costs, and would have to remove existing climate change programs while introducing a carbon tax if it didn't want to steal Europe's self-flagellation carbon whip.
The Australian's Greg Sheridan sourced from Senior House Republican Jim Sensenbrenner that he thinks Australia's carbon tax is ''unilateral economic disarmament'' and the US won't be following suit.
At least there is an off-chance the Chinese might one day introduce an emissions trading scheme if they can find a way to profit from it. But without similar economy-wide schemes, Australia is left trying to design a carbon price software package without the Chinese Windows and US Apple operating systems having been designed yet.
The problem is exacerbated without an international treaty negotiated to succeed the expiring Kyoto Protocol at the end of 2012.
Since the 2007 Bali climate change summit, governments have squabbled over extending the protocol or creating a long-term non-binding emissions reduction cooperative agreement.
The subsequent Poznan, Copenhagen and Cancun summits all failed to resolve this deadlock, and the 2011 Durban summit is also likely to leave a carbon tax at risk of being born a bastard.
But despite the shaky foundations of Gillard's tax, its introduction will foster rent-seekers to defend it. A risk for Abbott is that the Press Gallery becomes bedazzled by industrial support for a legislated carbon tax when they argue business certainty will be undermined through its removal.
The problem is that the companies doing so are likely to be AGL, General Electric, Better Place and Pacific Hydro, all of whom have significant business interests in turning non-viable assets into profits if the government punishes their competitors through a carbon tax.
It's the reason these companies, with a smattering of others, recently released an open letter ''strongly support[ing] the introduction of a well-designed carbon price to support the transition to a low-carbon economy''.
Attacking Abbott's carbon tax rollback will actually play into his hands. After all, doing so will keep the issue alive throughout 2012-13 as other government policies are debated. Meanwhile, Abbott will seek to argue with the same legitimacy that every weather event is connected to climate change, and that any cost-of-living price rises will be the carbon tax's fault.
By that time, love for the carbon tax baby will have gone cold. The public will more than likely want to see it put to bed.
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