ESTRAGON: Let’s go.

VLADIMIR: We can’t.

ESTRAGON: Why not?

VLADIMIR: We’re waiting for Garnaut.

ESTRAGON: (despairingly). Ah!

You couldn’t mistake the genuine warmth and goodwill in Bali at hearing the news that Australia’s new Prime Minister had immediately ratified the Kyoto Protocol and rejoined the global climate effort.

I imagine my warning to him that very day — that his red carpet welcome would not last long unless followed up by real commitments and leadership — was shrugged off or ignored. But it is exactly what is happening here. Rudd’s golden glow is already tarnished and the goodwill is rapidly being squandered by confused contradictions and mis-steps.

The fundamental problem, it seems to me, is that instead of having Prime Minister Rudd, we are still stuck with Kevin Rudd, the cautious, conservative, “me too” Opposition Leader.

Opposition Leader Rudd, in order to slay the dragon, felt it necessary to come down like a tonne of bricks on poor Robert McClelland for daring to express Labor’s (morally strong) policy on the death penalty. When battling Howard and his faithful media hounds, perhaps he needed to do so, much though it was an abhorrent attack on a solid shadow minister.

Opposition Leader Rudd conveniently established the Garnaut climate change review to report well after any possible election date, giving him a palatable excuse for not setting a potentially electorally fraught 2020 emissions reduction target during the election campaign – he was “Waiting for Garnaut”.

But now Rudd has slain the dragon. He is Prime Minister and the agenda is his to set. So why is he still jumping at Howard’s shadow?

Howard’s claim that 30% cuts on 1990 levels by 2020 would bankrupt the Australian economy was Howard’s personal prejudice. It was not based on any modelling or any reasonable assumptions. Indeed, a study by PriceWaterhouse Coopers that I was briefed on here at the weekend is finding that most leading economic players in Australia reckon we will actually save money by meeting it.

Prime Minister Rudd, if he were acting the PM, would stamp all over this position, overturning the ideological orthodoxy of the ancient regime and launching a new reality, sidelining the outdated views of the new Opposition Leader in the process. That’s what Howard would have done.

But instead, Rudd stamped on his delegation for daring to suggest that Australia supported the Vienna Declaration, which sets out cuts for developed countries of 25-40% as the basis for post 2012 treaty negotiations. In one fell swoop he undermined a lot of the goodwill he’d earned by making Kyoto ratification his first act as PM.

Why? Because we’re still “waiting for Garnaut”.

This position makes no sense. There is no inconsistency between accepting a global negotiating range for a global emission target now, and developing a national position within, or beyond, that range in the following months or years. Indeed, that is what these negotiations are about. If every country had set its own domestic emissions target in stone before beginning global negotiations on setting targets, there would be no reason to negotiate!

What Christian Kerr and other newcomers to this issue need to understand is that recent history stands against Australia. The rest of the world will be justifiably cynical about the arrival of a new PM spruiking his ratification but refusing to sign up to a negotiating range and leading a delegation largely made up of the same climate troglodytes who have attended the last decade of meetings.

If Rudd wants to play any role in these negotiations, let alone a leading role, he must convince the rest of the world now that Australia is genuinely committed to the process and to the outcome. Any more equivocating, any more empty rhetoric, and he will be consigned to history’s sidelines.

Just like Vladimir and Estragon, he’ll always be wondering whether he made the right choice to sit there waiting for Garnaut.