Considering the political football climate policy has become, who can blame us for our division and confusion on the issue? Peter Lewis and Jackie Woods write.

As the spectacle of Clive Palmer's climate policy announcement recedes into a haze of confusion, a beacon of hope shines for Tony Abbott.

Not only will he be able to scrap the carbon tax with the Palmer United bloc's crucial support in the Senate, but he might get off the hook for implementing Direct Action too.

In Direct Action, the Abbott Government has achieved what few thought possible - a climate policy even less popular than the carbon tax.

The Government's determination to 'axe the tax' is palpable - those three words at the core of the Coalition's artfully cadenced election mantra. But as Labor's contentious carbon tax turns two and the new Senate is formed, the future of Australia's climate policy seems less certain than ever.

The Coalition developed its Direct Action platform as it turned its back on a bipartisan approach to climate policy and dumped its support for an emissions trading scheme - the approach preferred by John Howard as prime minister and Malcolm Turnbull as opposition leader. Direct Action aims for the same emissions reduction target as Labor's carbon pricing scheme - 5 per cent on 2000 levels by 2020 - but is built on a premise of paying business to compete for emissions reduction projects.

Mechanisms aside, Direct Action is climate policy developed in a political context of fierce campaigning against climate policy, and perhaps it's this core contradiction that leaves voters unconvinced.

Direct Action has always been the least popular of the range of options on the table for Australian lawmakers. This week's Essential Report shows support for the unpopular policy falling even further, with voters preferring the option of dumping the carbon tax and replacing it with no climate policy at all.

Q. Which of the following actions on climate change do you most support?

Total Vote Labor Vote Lib/Nat Vote Greens Vote other Oct 13 Apr 14 Keeping the carbon tax 16% 31% 2% 40% 4% 15% 17% Replacing the carbon tax with an emissions trading scheme 22% 29% 16% 28% 23% 21% 22% Replacing the carbon tax with the Liberal's "direct action" plan 9% 1% 20% 7% 10% 15% 12% Dumping the carbon tax and not replacing it at all 33% 21% 45% 10% 49% 31% 30% Don't know 19% 18% 17% 15% 14% 18% 19%

Support for Direct Action has fallen below 10 per cent; and in a policy area fraught with partisan division, only 20 per cent of Coalition voters are backing the government in.

The largest group, a third of voters, want dumping the carbon tax to be the end of it.

But if we combine the groups who support carbon pricing - whether via the carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme - we get 38 per cent. And with nearly one in five voters admitting they don't know the best way forward on climate policy, perhaps the clearest picture to emerge is one of division and confusion.

Considering the political football climate policy has become, who can blame us?

As the new Senate forms this week, setting Australia's response to climate change is emerging as a key responsibility. And even while the Government prepares to dismantle Labor's carbon pricing scheme, the journey is far from over.

After all, a majority of Australians believe the science of human-induced climate change.

Q. Do you believe that there is fairly conclusive evidence that climate change is happening and caused by human activity or do you believe that the evidence is still not in and we may just be witnessing a normal fluctuation in the earth's climate which happens from time to time?*

Total Vote Labor Vote Lib/Nat Vote Greens Vote other Climate change is happening and is caused by human activity 53% 69% 31% 88% 44% We are just witnessing a normal fluctuation in the earth's climate 35% 20% 57% 11% 43% Don't know 12% 11% 12% 1% 13%

*June 17 2014

Coalition voters are most likely to accept the 'normal fluctuation' theory. But a bigger divider on the question of climate change is age.

The younger the voter, the more likely they are to accept that climate change is real and caused by human activity.

We also know that supporting the science of climate change is linked to wanting policy action - voters who accept human causation want a human solution, except in the case of Direct Action, a climate change solution whose limited support tends to come from those who don't believe in climate change.

Younger voters' strong acceptance of the science of human-induced climate change suggests this is a policy challenge that will only become more important over time.

The Government may celebrate as Clive Palmer helps it kill off the price on carbon; it may also dodge the bullet of its own unpopular Direct Action policy, with indications it won't make it through the new Senate.

But what next? Perhaps the only certainty for the Abbott Government is that the climate policy challenge won't end with the death of the carbon tax. As momentum for action builds internationally, it may turn out that by doing nothing, the political pain just gets worse.

The survey was conducted online from the 26th to 29th June 2014 and is based on 1,002 respondents.

Peter Lewis is a director of Essential Media Communications. View his full profile here. Jackie Woods is a communications consultant at Essential Media Communications. View her full profile here.