Prices were never going to plummet in the absence of a carbon tax, so the longer its scrapping is delayed, the longer this reality is kept hidden, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his ministers are having great fun lambasting Labor's decision to continue to oppose the repeal of the carbon tax unless it is replaced with an emissions trading scheme, as Kevin Rudd proposed before the last election.

It is, they claim, a travesty of democracy, denying the government's mandate and frustrating the clearly expressed will of the electorate. And some of them are adding privately, it is also a great relief because it enables Abbott to preserve what is left of his credibility on the issue - at least for a while longer.

Much of Abbott's railing against the great big new tax on everything has already been exposed for the bluster it always was. Whyalla has not been wiped out, the Sunday roast is still affordable, and the dreaded python squeeze has singularly failed to strangle the economy. This has been of little consequence to an electorate long inured to political hyperbole and happy to muddle along in spite of it.

But the voters still react strongly to any twinges from what Ben Chifley identified as the most sensitive part of their anatomy, the hip pocket nerve: and they do believe that the carbon tax has significantly raised their cost of living. Their budgets long ago absorbed the compensation introduced by the last government and to be continued by the present one, and they believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are doing it tough.

Obviously the most direct impact has come from increases in their electricity and gas bills, but they are also inclined to credit Abbott's endlessly repeated claim that the carbon tax has put up the cost of just about everything. And they expect that as soon as the tax is repealed, prices will fall. After all, that is what Abbott and his team promised: instant relief, and plenty of it. Electricity down by 9 per cent, gas down by 7 per cent and across the board savings totalling $550 a year for the average family - whatever that is. What do we want? More money. When do we want it? Now.

But the brutal reality is that we are unlikely to get it - at least not much of it, and not for quite a while. Yet again, life turns out to be not as simple as Tony Abbott's slogans. Two of the country's biggest business conglomerates, the Australian Industry Group and the Business Council of Australia, have both warned the Carbon Tax Repeal Taskforce not to hold its collective breath. As the AIG submission tactfully puts it: "The proportionate impact of removing carbon costs will likely not match the impact of their introduction."

The main reason, apparently, is that some 70 per cent of the costs were absorbed by business at the time - they were never passed on in the first place. And the group's CEO Innes Wilcox throws in a caveat about the remaining 30 per cent: "By the time it gets repealed it will have been in place for two years. That's not an easy thing to wind up." The BCA has its own get out clause: new contracts normally take about three months to write, and there will be a lot of devil in the detail. In other words, the across-the-board bonanza Abbott forecast so glibly for two years just isn't going to happen.

But hang on; even if nothing much changes in the supermarket, at least our power bills must fall; after all, that's where the tax hit directly, isn't it? Well, yes and no. A joint submission from all peak energy bodies - generators, wholesalers and retailers - says it is difficult to be specific, which hardly sounds like a reason for joyous optimism. After the tax is repealed, it will take months before it flows through to consumers, and even then it will vary widely from place to place.

For starters, prices in most states are going to rise on July 1 - the date from which Abbott promises the repeal will kick in - because of increased costs of transmission, which will probably at least negate any savings from dropping the carbon tax, which only applies to about 30 per cent of the end price of electricity anyway. In Western Australia and the Northern Territory, retail prices are set directly by the government, which may or may not decide to hang on to any savings, when and if they happen. In other regions there are complex rules about how and when prices can be adjusted.

And then, further down the line, there are different kinds of contracts for customers, some of whom have already received discounts for factoring in carbon prices and will not get a second bite. Gas is another matter again: in states like New South Wales and Western Australia, prices are regulated and will take time to adjust. So the bottom line is that some punters may get some small relief when it trickles down the line, but by that time any savings will have been overtaken by other price rises, so anger and resentment are far more likely responses than the gratitude Abbott has been counting on.

So the longer this reckoning can be postponed, the better: hence the intransigence of the Labor Party and the Greens are in fact bonuses for which Abbott should be profoundly thankful. He and Joe Hockey are still insisting that all their promises will be delivered: the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is to be given extra funds to make sure of it. But it is already clear that neither the ACCC nor any other authority can make this pig fly. If Abbott is in fact determined to honour his promise, he will have to find the cash in consolidated revenue, because it certainly isn't coming from industry - not unless Abbott re-nationalises the whole shebang, which would surely be a back flip beyond even him.

So thank heavens we have disposed of the budget emergency. We don't need any more taxes or charges - well, perhaps just a few of those foreshadowed by the last government. The money has started to flow again. And Joe Hockey reckons that his first budget will have the solution to everything. And you'd better believe him. As Abbott said, it's all about trust. It has to be; we've got nothing else to rely on.

Mungo MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.