Everybody wants to be green in the new political environment

If there is one immutable truth about Canberra, it is that power is always seething and shifting.

As politicos gear up for 2007, deaf Freddy can hear the sound of cards reshuffling. That's about much more than rearranging key portfolio deckchairs, as Kevin Rudd has already done with some skill and John Howard is rumoured to be contemplating with more cunning.

It also goes beyond renewing inner-sanctum support staff, whose influence should never be underestimated although they rarely hit headlines in their own right; Rudd has advertised nationally for seven new team players, including chief of staff, director of policy and press secretary, while Howard's long-standing top adviser Arthur Sinodinos has been lured to investment bank Goldman Sachs.

All these internal rejiggings are significant. But only in the effective service of the main game, which is shaping up to be strategic rebranding.

The most tantalising card both major parties are fingering on that front is coloured green. A few months back, the suave Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth broke open a wave of popular Australian concern about planetary degradation and sustainability that must have turned longer-term, harder-core environmental activists a tinge green with campaign envy.

Now that the feral cat is out of the bag, can it be tempted to sleep in either mainstream party's political camp, at least for as long as it takes to win the electoral prize of 2007?

Read the tea leaves of dying December, swirling like firestorm ash or freaky flakes of summer snow. Kevin Rudd rolled Peter Garrett into what's shaping up as the super-sexy climate change and environment portfolio, leaving Kim Beazley's environment spokesman, Anthony Albanese, to face off with Malcolm Turnbull on water.

Albanese is no Gore and certainly no silvertail - but the Coalition shouldn't get too smug. As the elected representative of one crucial green-leaning inner-Sydney seat, Albanese did way more in the job than warm Garrett's waiting star seat in the aftermath of Howard checkmating Mark Latham on Tasmania's forestry issues, including visiting and being visibly moved by the giant old-growth trees at the heart of the matter - to the chagrin of Tasmania's pro-logging state Labor Premier Paul Lennon, union and forestry industry players, and their mates.

By contrast, Garrett was unavailable for a Tassie gig on Rudd's recent "listening tour" - allegedly too busy with climate change, maybe leafing through snaps from his 1980s trip to the Lemonthyme with brother-in-arms Bob Brown, possibly pondering a plausible Labor union of no-nukes principle with pro-nukes pragmatism.

More likely, not wanting his profile plastered all over Rudd's message that "listening" on Tasmanian trees means close consultation with the still pro-logging Lennon Government, unions and forest industries - but not conservation groups nor, presumably, the rest (that's the majority) of the Tasmanian community.

It also means backing the standing deal between Howard and Lennon on forests, which as far as that goes, leaves no room to slide a cigarette paper between the federal policy positions of the major parties.

Clever counter-check politics, mate? Not necessarily. The next day phones rang hot in the electorate offices of Labor seats that Rudd can't afford to take for granted, messaging "you had me back, now I'm gone again".