It’s odd how, three years after Kevin Rudd became leader, the Coalition still hasn’t settled on a workable characterisation of him for their own purposes.  They’ve tried a few — Rudd the socialist, Rudd the big spending Whitlamite, Rudd who stands for nothing, Rudd the spinner, Rudd the bloodless bureaucrat — but none have ever taken, and in some cases actually reinforced exactly the impression Rudd wanted to convey.

Rudd and his team, though, have been much better at settling on a caricature of their opponents and pounding it relentlessly.  Whether they have as much luck with Tony Abbott as they had with Malcolm Turnbull (with whom they were ultimately too successful in beating up on) remains to be seen, but we saw the start of it yesterday when the Prime Minister had a sit-down with Laurie Oakes.  Within two minutes, Rudd had used the word “risk” about Abbott twice.  It’s a word that will get a big run for the rest of the Abbott leadership, however long it lasts.

Now, the Government was probably going to run the “risk” line regardless of who the Opposition leader was, but Abbott’s well-defined image as a man of strong conservative passions and a tendency to shoot from the lip give the image a particular hook for voters, which will help sell it in a way that, say, wouldn’t have happened if Joe Hockey or Andrew Robb were running the show.

It also meshes well with the Government’s big-picture agenda, of the need for productivity improvement and fiscal discipline to address the challenge of an ageing population.  Contrary to what one Liberal Party spruiker was saying in the mainstream media today, this is not, or not entirely, about being “long-term and high-minded”.  It has a very direct link to short-term political tactics, one that smarter observers picked up immediately yesterday: it allows the Government to paint the Coalition’s refusal to pass the private health insurance rebate wind-back as not merely obstructionism for the sake of it, but one with potentially dire consequences.

What the Intergenerational report tomorrow will reveal for the first time is that the cumulative impact of knocking that major reform back is in the order of one hundred billion dollars over the next several decades.

$100 billion! That’s a hell of a lot of risk.  I wonder how much it would be out to 2100.  Keep an eye out for that $100 billion figure, and add it to your Question Time bingo word list.

On climate change, though, the Government now has a far more difficult task than slapping the label “risky” on a bloke prone to running around making a goose of himself.  The Prime Minister now has to go back to basics and make the case for climate-change action in a way that, because John Howard took fright and embraced an ETS in his last term, he has never had to do before.  In particular, he has to make the case that it is a priority for Australia, and that it isn’t a nebulous future threat but a real and present danger to Australian jobs.

He also has to show voters that unilateral action actually benefits Australia more than multilateral action because of the economic benefits that will flow to first-movers and early adopters in the transition to a low-carbon economy. That’s a tough sell but Bob Hawke and Paul Keating managed it in the 1980s and Rudd claims to be their reformist heir.

Abbott’s climate-change magic pudding, in which major economic change can be achieved with no more pain than the inconvenience of writing a few cheques to farmers and businesses, will be unveiled tomorrow.  It will be the climate-change policy of a leadership that doesn’t believe in climate change, crafted by two men, Greg Hunt and Simon Birmingham, who do.

If Abbott and his media cheerleaders are skillful enough salesmen to convince voters climate change can be crossed off their list of concerns just by throwing some handouts around, they will make the Government’s life considerably tougher.  But if the Government can show the innately ridiculous nature of the Coalition’s approach, it will go a considerable way to neutralising an issue that has turned against it.

I’d back the Government to do it, if only because it has the experience of crafting the CPRS, another form of magic pudding every bit as silly as the nonsense the Coalition will produce tomorrow. When it comes to dodgy carbon accounting, the Government has become a master.

The Coalition also has its own problems on the issue.  Abbott and Barnaby Joyce declined to meet conspiracy theorist Christopher Monckton.  But Nationals leader Warren Truss met the self-proclaimed Nobel Laureate on Saturday, his office confirmed this morning.  Truss attended a Monckton speech at Noosa organised by four locals and met with Monckton afterwards, although the two did not hold a formal discussion.

Noosa, an apparent hot spot of climate denialism, is in Truss’ electorate and the Monckton organisers include some constituents of Truss’.

Denialism and conspiracy theory is strong in National Party redoubts such as  regional Queensland, the sort of places where One Nation ran hot and threatened the Nationals a decade ago.  These are people who seriously believe climate action is a communist plot; indeed, seriously believe there are communists still capable of plotting.

The Coalition is stuck with the ongoing issue of how to placate the lunatic fringe on show up in Noosa, and the urban voters, especially women, who are needed to win back seats for the Liberals.  Don’t think all the climate-change problems are on Labor’s side.