After the leadership spill last year Miranda Devine declared that “the women of the twitterverse, the ABC and Crikey.com agreed Abbott's election was a disaster”.

A disaster? Maybe, but not one without an amusing side. Tony Abbot as PM would indeed be disastrous, but Tony Abbot as the leader of the opposition could prove to be quite a boon for the nation, if not for the government.

 Abbot is many things, quite a few of them unpleasant and most of them listed in the Manual of Mental Disorders; but even his greatest detractors would have to concede that he does not suffer from the sort of mealy-mouthed offensively-inoffensive verbosity that stifles so many other politicians. And as mad as the monk may be, he is as at least as intelligent as Turnbull and far, far more experienced with the ludicrous political machinations of Canberran politics.

Abbott, arguing staunch policy from the right, could force the government into articulating a much clearer stance, not just on climate change, but on issues like gay marriage, asylum seekers, education, health care and tax reform. Rudd has, until now, been meeting the opposition in the middle and fighting them over the decimal points, with the status quo being the only goal anyone aims for. In polarising debate over key issues, Abbott may finally push Rudd off so many of the fences he’s been clinging to.

In all the hyperbole over the failure of the ETS it is easy to lose sight of the fact that it was a highly ineffective piece of legislation, so much so that it united the Greens and the Minchinites against it. Rudd’s attempt to appease the coal industry, without conceding an inch of the high moral ground, resulted in an ETS framework that would have created a huge drag on the economy, while handing out windfalls for polluters and doing nothing to reduce carbon emissions.

With no effective opposition, the government was able to ignore the Greens demands for a genuinely effective ETS, and negotiate only with a compliant opposition. Abbott may not be able to come up with a viable alternative to an ETS, but while he stands firm on refusing to allow the “great big tax on everything” to go through, he may end up forcing the government to do it for him.

Whether they go to a Double Dissolution or not, another election is unlikely to give the government control in the senate, and they will have no choice but to reach a compromise deal with either the Greens or a truly conservative coalition.

It’s difficult to make accurate predictions in the current rapidly changing political environment, but there does look to be a clear opportunity for the Greens to pick up protest votes from moderate liberals in a climate change election. A more powerful Green voice and pressure from the voters to take action on climate change, combined with increasing industry demands for a market based solution and the need for certainty on how the carbon issue will be addressed, will ensure that doing nothing is not an option. In the face of this even the Rudd government would find it difficult to convince the voters that an intransigent coalition was the reason for their lack of action.

An Abbott led coalition, by polarising opinion on climate change, could actually be the impetus for genuine and effective action led by the Rudd government and the Greens.

Wouldn’t that be a truly worthwhile legacy for the Mad Monk?

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