Carbon pricing and the Gillard government are fused together like molten glass in the memory of all those who witnessed the traumatic and consequential policy and political drama surrounding it.

The years-long affair is a cautionary tale of what happens when intense negative campaigning, misinformation and clumsy politicking collide to kill otherwise sound policy – and prime ministerial careers.

The great moral challenge

Climate policy became an increasing concern in the early years of the millennium. The UK government’s Stern Review on the economics of climate change in 2006 galvanised attention. So too did increasingly alarming United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

In Australia, the Howard government, in the thrall of resource sector interests, leant against climate action.

In contrast, Labor Opposition leader Kevin Rudd declared climate change “the great moral challenge of our generation”.

Politics and policy share a love-hate relationship, but we can’t have one without the other. In this six-part series, we’re chronicling how policies have shaped Australia’s prime ministers, for better or worse, and what it means for how politicians tackle today’s big challenges.

Labor promised to establish an emissions trading scheme – a market-based mechanism of the kind already used overseas to speed up decarbonisation of the economy. By bringing the market price closer to the real-world cost of its use, the scheme dampens demand for carbon-based energy over time, and makes other forms of energy more attractive.

The Howard government promised such a scheme too, if re-elected, to improve its environmental credentials in the run-up to the 2007 election which Labor looked likely to, and did indeed, win.

Read more: Climate explained: how emissions trading schemes work and they can help us shift to a zero carbon future

A ‘great big tax on everything’

In 2007 Rudd, together with the states and territories,........

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