TONY ABBOTT says he will call a double dissolution election if he wins power and Labor and the Greens combine in the Senate to stop him from repealing the carbon tax.
The Opposition Leader, who is sitting on a massive election-winning lead in the polls, issued the edict in front of a community forum in Brisbane last night.
He said if the government was ''walloped'' at the next election over the carbon tax, it would be unthinkable that a humiliated Labor would not allow an Abbott government to rescind it.
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Mr Abbott said he would have a mandate to rescind the tax which would be equal to that of Labor when it repealed Work Choices after its 2007 victory.
''It's just not political commonsense,'' he said.
However, Mr Abbott said if Labor refused to budge, he would seek a double dissolution, which needs the same legislation being blocked twice by the Senate, three months apart, as a trigger.
If Australia can't effect these kinds of changes, where does it leave us in the big game against the Chinese, most of Europe, that are making these changes in climate."
He acknowledged that it was difficult to sell the tax to the public, but that the public would get behind it when it saw the package as whole, including the increase in the tax-free threshold.
Mr Keating said Opposition leader Tony Abbott's argument that "you don't tax the polluters, you give them money to change their bad habits, is tripe".
He accused Mr Abbott of telling Australians, "if you don't give me the job, I'll wreck the place".
"Tony Abbott has got to get the political judo chop," he said.
On day five of his anti-carbon tax sales pitch Mr Abbott toured an agricultural transport company in Gatton, 90km west of Brisbane, to outline his plan against the "toxic tax". "I will be campaigning every single day between now and the next election, whenever it is, against this carbon tax," he said.
"This is a tax which isn't fair, it won't do anything to reduce global emissions.
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