'Where's My Carbon Money?'

Now that the carbon price has been released, and most of the tax architecture and associated rebates announced, the foci of arguments around the issue has shifted from economy-ending doomsday predictions to the alarming pettiness of thinly veiled greed. Complaints are no longer the half screamed nonsensical panic of 'Won't someone please think of the economy', as they have switched to the far more common 'What do I get and why can't it be more?'

The first salvo in this new paradigm of whinging was the banner headline at that bastion of baseness News.com.au. Accompanying a large photo of a 20 cent piece, it read 'For Most, this is what the Carbon Tax is Worth'. Yes, according to News, under the Carbon Tax many will only be 20 cents a week better off. Oh the shame of it. You mean it won't affect me whatsoever? A tax reform where I don't come out miles ahead? Where if someone hadn't told me it existed, I wouldn't even know it was there? Treason.

Remember when this tax was meant to make middle-income earners take on third jobs as Dickensian era chimney sweeps? Remember when the end was nigh? When cats were laying with dogs and jaguars were falling from the sky?

Now it's: '20 cents…bit stingy.'

Completely without irony.

It's as if there has been a conscious forgetting of all that came before this announcement. No one has appeared to click that the past six months of debate on this issue has been an orgy of what ifs based on exactly no information. Much of that is the Government's fault, as there wasn't any to go on however, the seamlessness of the switch from blood curdling cries of impending poverty to slightly perturbed bean counting is astounding. There has been no collective 'phew'. No relief. Nothing. Just collective furrowed brows at the national even steven.

Tony Abbott has continued on his merry way. Being in opposition, things he says one week to the next do not need to match up anyway. This morning he's staked his political future on defeating the tax. How he will do that I'm not sure, but I am sure that if the parliament passes the tax he won't be resigning. It certainly looks like passing at parliament as well, with the independents and the Greens deeply involved in the decision making, it would take mass public revolt to force a change of position, and once it's passed, that's the ballgame. By the time of the next election, the tax will have been in place for more than a year, which will make it pretty much immovable.

Much will now rest on whether the Gillard Government has the stomach to resist the whims of the polls to pass and implement the tax without falling in a wobbly heap. Judging by the polls of the last two months, they have pretty good stomachs.