CANBERRA, June 25 (Reuters) - The Australian parliament's move on Thursday to defer a vote on carbon trading until August is unlikely to alter the fact the bill faces defeat when legislators re-convene after the winter break.
The widely expected set-back raises the risk that the world's most ambitious cap-and-trade carbon emissions plan could be further hobbled by political ructions and lead Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to call early elections around December.
IS THE BILL DEAD?
The delay means the parliament will resume debate on August 13, but there are no signs that either the conservative opposition that says the laws will punish business or the Green opposition that wants much tougher measures are ready to cede ground to allow the scheme to pass.
The government wants Australia's carbon trading scheme to be the world's broadest, covering 75 percent of industrial emissions and 1,000 of the largest polluters, from transport operators to resource firms and aluminium makers.
POLITICAL MOVES
The delay may give the government more time to find ways to win its passage, and also sets the clock ticking on a possible early election that could break the deadlock.
If the Senate blocks or rejects the laws a second time, after an interval of three months, Rudd will have a trigger to call a early double-dissolution election in both houses of parliament.
To qualify as a trigger, the earliest the Senate could vote on the package a second time would be in late October or early November. That would give Rudd the option of a mid-December election, or in early 2010, ahead of the May budget.
If the government went on to win a double-dissolution, it could push the laws through a special joint sitting of the lower house and the Senate to clear the political deadlock.
WHO ARE THE KEY PLAYERS
Independent swing vote Senator Nick Xenophon won upper house support to delay negotiation on the package of 11 emissions trade bills until Aug. 13 as time ran out on parliament's current sitting, but government opponents are all aligned against it.
Even agreement by senators on extra economic modelling will not sway key balance-of-power independent Steve Fielding, who on Wednesday said he did not believe in global warming and the emissions scheme, if passed, would destroy jobs.
Conservative opposition senators holding the largest vote bloc are also opposed and want the centre-left government to put Australia's scheme on the back-burner until both the United States and other nations decide their climate shift plans.
But Fielding's opposition, and Green lawmakers demanding the government drop opposition to a dramatic hardening of emission cut targets, means the government still faces an impossible hurdle to win cross bench support. (Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Jonathan Leff)