By Phillip Coorey
Among the 3000 or so protesters who gathered outside Parliament House on March 23 to rally against the carbon tax, few believed in global warming. It was easier to find subscribers to some sort of nebulous United Nations conspiracy than it was to find a believer in the scientific consensus.
When Tony Abbott addressed the baying crowd, he stressed that Julia Gillard's broken promise about a carbon tax was the issue. ''I don't think this is about climate change. Climate change happens, mankind does make a contribution,'' he said. During the brief but awkward silence that ensued, a little old lady turned to reassure those around her: ''He has to say that.''
In a golden zone ... Tony Abbott at the anti-carbon tax rally.
Abbott had entered that golden zone in which opposition leaders can find themselves. Such is the dislike of their opponent, they can say and do virtually anything and be ignored, defended or forgiven.
When confirmation came that Gillard would announce the details of the carbon price package on July 10, Abbott's immediate instinct was to stick to his scheduled plan to live with an Aboriginal community on Cape York for the week. He was happy to let his climate change spokesman, Greg Hunt, mount the initial response.
Overnight, he changed his mind, or had it changed for him. The Cape York visit was postponed for a week, then for another week, now for a third. The thinking inside the Coalition is that Abbott is on a roll, and so another week on the phoney campaign trail beckons.
Yet Gillard, who will rein in her roadshow this week, has outcampaigned Abbott - especially last week, when he was caught giving different messages to different audiences because that's what they wanted to hear.
He indirectly ridiculed his own emissions reduction target as ''crazy'' when attacking Labor's same policy goal, denied he had ever favoured a carbon tax or price on carbon when he plainly had, and changed Coalition policy on the run regarding dirty brown coal power stations to differentiate it from Labor's.
Abbott has so managed to send conflicting messages on climate change that when Malcolm Turnbull gave a speech on Thursday backing the scientific consensus and attacking the argument about Australia getting ahead of China and other big polluters with its 5 per cent target, it was seen as treasonous.
Gillard once predicted that Abbott would come undone on climate change by having to tailor his message to different groups, from believers to sceptics. But so far behind has she sunk and so hostile is the feeling towards the government that she needs to either pull even or at least close the gap a little before anyone will take notice.
Labor and Gillard's position is dire but it is not dissimilar to that of John Howard in early 2001. In some ways, his was worse. Both faced oppositions banking on victory due to anger over a new tax.
The Nielsen poll has Gillard's approval rating at 34 per cent and Labor's primary vote at 26 per cent. In April 2001, six months before a federal election, Howard's approval rating was 35 per cent and the Coalition's primary vote 31 per cent. Gillard lags Abbott as preferred prime minister by 11 points, whereas Howard trailed Kim Beazley by seven points.
In the first months of 2001, conservative governments were wiped out in Western Australia and Queensland, and the GST was blamed. Howard's government was clobbered in the Ryan byelection caused by the departure of John Moore. The backbench was losing its nerve and when the senior ministers Peter Reith and Michael Wooldridge announced they were quitting at the election, it was interpreted as a sign they thought the government was finished.
However, three months later, in July 2001, the Coalition snatched a byelection victory in Aston. Howard said last week that Aston showed his government was on track for a victory at the 2001 election. The subsequent Tampa episode and September 11 attacks just made that victory more emphatic.
To mount a recovery, Gillard lacks at least two ingredients Howard had - money and authority. The budget of May 2001 was a shameless exercise in using the surplus to festoon pensioners and self-funded retirees with money to salve their anger over the GST. And Howard had a majority on the floor of the House, meaning he never faced losing such votes as the constitutionally-meaningless but authority-sapping Greens-Coalition motion condemning the Malaysian solution.
But unlike Howard, Gillard - caucus permitting - has time. And Abbott's faltering last week was the first glimmer of hope for Labor for ages.
Phillip Coorey is The Sydney Morning Herald's chief political correspondent.
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