The Rudd Government has also been careful not to tie itself too closely to its climate advisor, Ross Garnaut. However, Garnaut’s proposed targets should be attractive to the Government, and would allow it to say to the voters that it was doing something but to argue to business that it was not imposing excessive burdens.

The lofty ambitions of Ross Garnaut’s draft report in July have been curtailed by economic modelling. Earlier rhetoric that Australia needed to lead global action has been diluted to more modest aspirations: a 5 per cent emissions cut by 2020 in the absence of a comprehensive global deal, or a 10per cent cut if such a deal can be brokered.

The long-awaited Treasury modelling partly unveiled yesterday in Professor Garnaut’s interim report on emissions trading revealed that a 10per cent emissions cut - within a global agreement - would come at a surprisingly low cost for Australia, about 0.1 per cent of GDP a year or a 1.1 per cent reduction in growth by 2020.

It’s time Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson went. It’s time the Liberal Party stopped genuflecting to John Howard, quit its dithering and got on with the business of renewal. It’s time the Liberal Party stopped giving Brendan Nelson the benefit of the doubt.

The first publicly available results from the Treasury’s emissions trading modelling reveal that a 10 per cent emission reduction would reduce Australia’s GDP by 1.1 per cent by 2020 and result in a carbon price by that date of about $34.50.

While the conservative side of politics considers abandoning economic credibility for populism, voters are growing wary - if not weary - of the Rudd style. The early, euphoric symbolism of ratifying Kyoto and saying Sorry is being displaced by a harsh reality that Rudd is no messiah.

It is not uncommon for the Republican platform to diverge from the positions of the presidential candidate, who must appeal to independent voters for a general election. But given Senator McCain’s recent efforts to align himself more closely with party’s conservative orthodoxy, the differences are still striking.

With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe in man-made climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.

Hopes that winter rains had brought a lengthy reprieve for the lower lakes at the mouth of the Murray were dashed by advice to Climate Change Minister Penny Wong from her department, revealing that a decision on whether to inundate them with sea water might have to be made as soon as February. With another long, rainless summer looming, the situation in the lower basin was the worst since records began in 1892.

Ross Garnaut warned in his draft report that “intense lobbying” could lead to “serious distortion of policy-making processes”. But this lobbying will extend from smokestack industries and miners, through driving organisations and the pensioner lobby, to millionaire wind-farm financiers, solar panel-makers and insurance companies.