My most recent Eureka Street articles on climate change policy (Celebrating the carbon tax and Gillard's climate coup) set out reasons for my optimism that, following the formation after the 2010 election of a minority Labor government under Julia Gillard which owed its continued existence to the support in Parliament of the Greens and Independents, Australia would at last be able to make progress towards legislating a carbon pricing system.
The arguments of those two articles have been borne out by events, though only after the real danger of Tony Abbott's 'stop the carbon tax' campaign, which seemed to be gathering public momentum, was surmounted.
In recent months, under Greg Combet's quiet but deft policy leadership, aided by Ross Garnaut's and Christine Milne's authoritative public education on the real issues, Australia has at last, after 17 years of debate, reached 'the end of the beginning': 18 bills have been drafted expressing the present Labor-Greens-Independents policy consensus that a carbon pricing system be put in place, to commence in July 2012.
These bills will now have a month of debate in each House of Parliament. Barring the unforeseen, they will become law in October. The Greens and Independents will support these bills.
The bills will set in place a carbon tax on about 300 firms (Australia's top emitters) for three years at an initial price of $23 per tonne of CO2 emissions. There will be fiscal compensations for lower-income taxpayers affected by public pricing knock-ons from this tax.
The tax will start the process of moving Australia from a high carbon burning, inefficient economy to a more efficient, lower carbon burning economy. It will be replaced by a carbon trading system in three years. (Negotiations have begun for Australia to possibly join the existing European Union carbon trading system).
Wisely, Gillard and Combet are addressing the large raft of climate change policy issues step by step, with the core issue of carbon pricing being tackled first. There will be later separate legislation on compensation for the beleaguered domestic steel industry, and on renewable energy targets and government incentives, where the Greens have more ambitious ideas than Labor.
I sense the Australian electorate is now resigned to the inevitability of this policy reform. The scientific evidence of manmade climate change continues to strengthen. The Tony Abbott campaign of fear and negativism peaked a few months ago. It lost momentum with the failure of the Convoy of No Confidence and a public turning away from the extremism and hysteria of radio shock jocks.
Abbott then turned down his carbon tax rhetoric. He will find it hard now to wind it back up again.
Also, the public attention caravan has moved on. Labor has secured important allies in industry and the trade unions. The carbon tax issue has been displaced in public debate by a media and public focus on three issues above all: the Craig Thomson affair, the offshore processing of asylum seekers, and fears about effects on Australia of the shaky global economy.
As journalist and editor Rob Burgess has noted, though Gillard's leadership has started to come under pressure, no one in Labor will want to try to overthrow her until its carbon pricing laws package securely in place. No new leader would want to go to a 2013 election with no progress made on climate change policy since 2007!
This means, effectively, no challenge to Gillard before the first half of 2012. If opinion polls keep trending down, Gillard may by then be vulnerable.
On the other hand, with the carbon bills finally passed and other things happening in the economy and politics, her standing relative to Abbott's might have begun to recover by then. I sense Abbott's indiscriminately negative high-pressure style of politics is a wasting asset that may alienate more voters as time goes by.
There will be important issues for Labor to resolve with the Greens over renewable energy policy, and with Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott over inland agricultural water supplies and fears of catchment pollution from coal mining and coal seam gas extraction. But the carbon price legislation will not be hostage to these issues.
Labor now has just two nightmares: that the Craig Thomson affair may spiral out of control, or that a global economic crisis may erupt on the scale of the 2008 GFC. (Maybe a third: that Andrew Wilkie might paint himself into an inextricable corner over his proposed gambling laws.)
Refreshingly, the carbon tax is no longer the crisis of the day.
Tony Kevin is the author of Crunch Time, a book exploring Australia's inadequate policy responses to the climate change crisis.