Things will soon look worse for Labor. While the carbon tax debate is about something that’s going to happen, Labor is in for a public opinion poll hiding. There was nothing in yesterday’s formal announcement of the plan for Australia to do its bit to combat global warming that is going to change attitudes. People are wary of change and they don’t trust politicians — especially politicians who have so recently lied to them and broken a promise not to introduce one.

So the more Julia Gillard goes around the country singing the praises of her big new tax that’s supposedly not going to hurt most people, the worse things will look for the government. Only when the proof actually is in the weekly bills and pay packets after July 1 next year is there a chance that the anger will dissipate. And even then the best Labor can hope for is is that the carbon tax and its associated changes will stop being a vote loser. There is nothing about it that is going to morph into a vote winner.

I can see no reason to change my prediction of Friday that “by the time the Parliament meets again in August there will be even more worried Labor members from marginal seats than there are now” and that “leadership speculation will be all the rage”.

For the Prime Minister it will be a mighty achievement to still be in office by this time next year.

Banks getting back their share. Figures for housing finance for May out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning give some hope for thinking that things may soon improve for the housing construction industry. While the trend figures for the number of commitments for owner-occupied housing finance rose by only 0.1%, in seasonally adjusted terms the May figure was 4.4% higher than that for April.

The figures also show that the banks are clawing back the slight drop in market share they experienced after the global financial crisis. In dollar terms they are now back to providing 93% of  housing loans.

That changes to the financial system over the past couple of decades have been favourable to the banks is shown clearly by the long-term trend of the value share:

So Lord, bless South Sudan. Before the split into two at the weekend with the formal declaration of an independent South Sudan, there had not been a Sudanese Olympic gold medal winner so the chances are that it will not be often that most of us get to hear the new nation’s national anthem. So, as a welcome to the new nation, here it is:

Sporting note: Darfur-based runner Ismail Ahmed Ismail won Sudan’s first Olympic medal at Beijing in 2008 — a silver in the men’s 800 metres but there’s no music for coming second!

An anti-Murdoch anthem. Perhaps a little anti-News Corp tabloid ditty is more to your musical taste at this time of the great loyalty being shown by the boss to the red-headed former editor of the now departed News of the World and its daily cousins The London Sun. If so here’s Billy Bragg urging the people of Britain to Never buy the Sun.

It was filmed live in the dressing room at Garforth Academy during the Garforth Festival, Yorkshire, on Saturday July 9 by Stephen Grubb.