The politics of carbon in Australia is fraught it seems. As the Labor Party plummets in the polls Julia Gillard's coalition hangs by a thread, and it seems that escort services on the Union's credit card could yet mean that even this carbon price doesn't get enacted.

New South Wales police have said that they are investigating claims that backbench Labor MP Craig Thomson committed a criminal offence by misusing a union credit card to pay for prostitutes.While he consistently denies this, the call girls are largely irrelevant. This was originally revealed by Fairfax in 2009 and was recently revived after Thomson dropped a defamation action against Fairfax. The importance of this is not Craig Thomson or his behaviour but rather that if Thomson is charged and convicted he will have to resign his seat of Dobell, which he holds with a slim 5% majority. Labor would not win the by-election. This week Thomson stood down from his role as Chair of the House Economics Committee.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has stood by her backbencher, but one vote in the Australian Parliament makes a huge difference to the  future of a carbon tax, which seems to be hanging by its fingertips at present.