For those who can remember the recent political past, this month’s carbon tax debate would surely bring back recollections of 1998 and the dynamics that surrounded the introduction of the last big tax on everything to be brought in by a government – in this case, John Howard’s Liberal-National coalition and its Goods and Services Tax.

The conditions in which the GST was brought in were eerily similar to those in which today’s carbon tax debate is being undertaken, notwithstanding the important point of difference that the GST was a Liberal-National creation, while the carbon tax will come to us via a Labor-Green unity action.

If the story of the GST’s arrival is considered, however, one is struck by the extent to which recent history seems to be repeating itself. When John Howard led the Liberals in the 1996 election, his party’s failure in the 1993 contest was upper most in his mind and he promised that he would never, ever introduce a goods and services tax.

Sweeping in to power in a land-slide, Howard’s policy on the GST changed, and he went to the 1998 election with the idea and a whole lot of blather about how important this reform would be for the nation’s economic future (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). Howard could even point to the fact that Labor had toyed with the idea of a GST back in 1985 when Paul Keating had been treasurer. No wonder Labor’s opposition to the GST appeared to be so craven.

Howard’s decision to run with the GST was driven in part by a strategic need to regain control of the policy debate. One of his problems was the immigration debate. Having stirred up opposition to multiculturalism and immigration during the Hawke and Keating governments, the Liberals found that, during their time in power, the politics of the race debate had spawned Pauline Hanson and her political support organisation, One Nation.

Pauline Hanson was threatening to overtake the government in the policy debate, and opinion polls suggested significant loss of Liberal voter support to One Nation. Proposing to ‘reform’ the tax system by bringing in a GST had the effect of taking the momentum out of the race issue and allowing for an adjustment of the debate back to more mainstream concerns such as the economy.

One Nation actually imploded over the tax debate, with Hanson disowning a proposal from her party to institute a cascading tax – a proposal that was derided across the commentary community and led to a split in One Nation.

The GST debate certainly stopped One Nation in its tracks, but it also very nearly cost Howard government. Had the coalition not had so much electoral fat to draw upon after its landslide defeat of Paul Keating in 1996, Howard would have gone down in history as the first one-term prime minister since Jim Scullin.

The fact that the coalition did manage to win a majority of seats despite polling a minority of the national two party vote, and that the GST was subsequently imposed on Australia, has somewhat obscured the very great political risk Howard took in running with this reform and how close he came to leading his now government to defeat. History is now repeating itself with Julia Gillard’s proposed carbon tax.

Like Howard, Gillard is a prime minister struggling to cut through in her first elected term. Like Howard, Gillard’s government has struggled with the race issue – this time in the form of refugee policy. Like Howard, Gillard leads a political party under siege from its furthest flank (in this case, the far left in the form of the Greens). And like Howard, Gillard seeks to employ the rhetoric about the virtues of reform in the ‘national interest’ to obscure the implications of saying one thing to the electorate during an election campaign but doing the opposite in government.

The political risks in embarking on the carbon tax are enormous for Gillard and Labor. In the 1998 election John Howard lost 13 seats in his bid to expedite a GST. Julia Gillard is not in the luxurious position of being able to lose seats in a post-carbon tax election and somehow hang on to government. Gillard seems to think

 that her dull rhetoric about the structural necessity of carbon pricing to the Australian economy will mitigate adverse voter reaction to the effect this proposal will have on the hip pocket. Perhaps she thinks that’s how Howard got away with it.

Perhaps she has forgotten the 1998 election. No doubt Gillard is being urged on by the Greens and their supporters to expedite a cause so dear to Green hearts. The danger for Gillard will be that a policy advocated by a party that wins a very small proportion of the vote and whose constituency can afford to pay for the higher cost of carbon has the potential to alienate Labor’s other core constituency – that is, those who are less well off or those who depend on a carbon-producing industry for their employment.

Gillard keeps talking about a welfare system to protect households from the cost of the scheme, but most voters will be sceptical about such claims. Government welfare programs are always minimal and they only ever go to the very poorest members of the community. Voters know they will be hit by this tax. Should Labor’s core blue collar constituency baulk at this proposal, Tony Abbott will be the next prime minister.