At last, after months of talking the Gillard government has finally introduced to the national parliament its legislative program that will usher in a carbon tax as part of its transitional climate change policy.

This is a crucial moment for the government, for its long-term survival depends on how the carbon tax policy is accepted by the public. The government’s intention is to legislate to provide for a charge of $23 per tonne of carbon produced, particularly by the nation’s domestic energy providers, under a temporary arrangement that will eventually be phased out in favour of an emissions trading scheme.

It has been this on-going debate about how best to respond to the need for some policy panacea to the perceived climatic consequences of industrial production that has so preoccupied the national political debate for nigh on four years. In that time, two prime ministers have fallen (John Howard at the 2007 election and Kevin Rudd at the hands of the Caucus ahead of Julia Gillard realising her leadership ambitions) as have a couple of opposition leaders (Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull) and one government lost office (Howard in 2007) and another one nearly lost office (Gillard in 2010) at the hands of the electors. The climate change debate was in close proximity to nearly all of these events. It is now Gillard’s turn to try to achieve a legislative outcome to this matter, and, in this task, she will be assisted by the current parliamentary configuration. The Greens are the crucial players here thanks to the party’s strategic position in the Senate.

Indeed, it was the realisation that the Greens now hold the whip-handle on this matter that moved Gillard to declare her intention to expedite a carbon tax even though she had made a promise to the contrary in the 2010 election campaign. Ms Gillard’s error here was that she was simultaneously frank with the electorate but naive in thinking that the voters would be willing to forgive her for appearing to have misled them during the campaign. Since the election, Labor’s support in the opinion polls has hit historic lows.

The government is hoping that this scheme, complete with its promise of tax cuts and welfare payments, will be the game changer in the national debate. The strategic thinking must be that some of the community will be pleased to see the government finally doing something about climate change, while others might think more benignly about Gillard and her colleagues once some of the cash diverted from energy producers by the carbon tax flows into their bank accounts.

This is a high risk strategy, however. Few politicians have succeeded in winning popularity contests on the back of introducing new taxes, and this includes John Howard who had to rely on dredging up a scare campaign over asylum seekers to win the 2001 election that was held after the introduction of his Goods and Services Tax. Mr Howard was helped here by events in the international arena, and he also had a lower house majority to help buffer him against any challenge coming from Labor. Ms Gillard has no such advantage at this time.

Indeed, she still has the little matter of dealing with independent MP Andrew Wilke’s plan to legislate for mandatory credit-limits for gamblers – a policy that will probably anger Labor’s traditional support base in outer suburban Sydney much more than the carbon tax.

With Gillard seemingly committed to accept Mr Wilke’s offer to assist her in committing political suicide, the Prime Minister’s need for the carbon tax program to act as a game-changer is all the more urgent. It’s a very risky strategy, and it could easily back-fire if the Liberal opposition’s campaign of pillorying Gillard and her tax continues to be as successful as it has been thus far.

If the voters continue to be resentful towards Gillard, then the carbon tax bills won’t change the game but will instead ensure that the next two years will be the last of this round of Labor governance. Thus the tax could well be an end-game rather than the game changer that Gillard is desperately hoping for.

* Dr Nick Economou is a senior lecturer in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University.