Don’t kid yourself. The climate wars ain’t over yet.

This time around, as Labor races to legislate the hard climate policy machinery that would help make the 43 per cent goal attainable, there are signs that Green shaming may not work so readily.

Bandt has to manage a party room still smarting from last year’s compromise. The Greens have new MPs with double-barrel names from places like Brisbane who unexpectedly won their seats by demonising fossil fuel.

Many Greens have an absolutist view on coal and gas, and want it to end regardless of the impact on the economy and jobs, which would almost certainly be felt in parts of the country where their supporters don’t live. But Labor’s do.

Bandt’s anti-gas crusade is built on a simple idea: that new fossil fuel projects are like adding more fuel to a raging fire. It has the same cut-through that Tony Abbott mastered in 2013 with his Stop the boats, Stop the tax and Stop the debt campaign. Simplistic, easy to grasp and without a whiff of what the downsides might be.

Explaining to voters in Greens-threatened Labor seats like Sydney, Richmond and Macnamara the reasons why gas is still a vital part of Australia’s energy mix, jobs and transition to renewables is more complicated than simply branding it as evil.

To be sure, climate change policy is by no means the only area in which there has been a general shift in mood across the parliament this year. But it is emblematic of Labor’s new reality.

The easy post-election halo of last year is giving way to a harder style of politics.

The Coalition is a big factor in this. Peter Dutton is determined to make this a Greens-Labor regime and is delighted that his decision to oppose climate policy gives Bandt the whip-hand on Labor’s platform.

There is growing talk of returning to open warfare between Labor and its Greens side-car.

But as tensions mount over emissions reduction policy, there is growing talk of returning to open warfare between Labor and its Greens side-car. Of going it alone. Of tearing each other down in the seats and constituencies that matter the most to both sides come the next election.

Less than a year into the term, policy is already bending to strategy.

To be sure, long-standing anti-Greens warrior Anthony Albanese would not need much convincing to turn his guns on Bandt. But he knows it is still too early in the term and Australians are counting on him to deliver concrete results regardless of what it takes.

Well familiar with fending off challenges from Greens in her progressive inner-city seat of Sydney, Plibersek was in full attack mode during question time on Wednesday.

The day before, the Greens party room had made Labor an impossible offer; we’re ready to back your heavy industrial and resources sector emissions reduction plan, or safeguard mechanism reform as it is befoggingly called.

But only if you promise to banish all new gas and coal, including investments like Woodside’s Scarborough, Tamboran Resources’ Beetaloo and the Santos-backed Narrabri projects.

This is a non-starter for Labor, and negotiations are still under way between Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Bandt to find a way through.

Labor is pointing out that its policy will deliver real results by forcing the nation’s 215 largest emitters to cut emissions by around 5 per cent a year, removing a total of 200 million tonnes of carbon through 2030 that would otherwise have been released.

Said Plibersek in Question Time, where she was joined by a barrage of Labor ministers, and proxies outside such as the Australian Workers Union: “I think that Greens voters would actually be shocked to see Greens members of parliament getting ready to sit next to Peter Dutton and Barnaby Joyce to vote against action on climate change.”

Pound for pound, the Greens have done more to worsen climate change than any other entity in the country.

— AWU national secretary Dan Walton

Said AWU national secretary Dan Walton in a reference to Kevin Rudd’s 2009 CPRS legislation that was sunk by the “vacuous moral purity” of the Greens: “Pound for pound, the Greens have done more to worsen climate change than any other entity in the country.”

Business is watching on in shock, and awe that climate policy is again in flux.

Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox said: “Industry has supported the mechanism in part because, given its history, we thought it was a rational approach that would gain broad support.

“Instead, energy and climate policy is again being used as a political football, much to the bemusement of those who do the actual investing in and development of energy sources, and their consumers.”

All sides are busy trying to figure out who would have more to lose if the safeguard mechanism were to die in the Senate.

Labor and in particular Bowen, the chief architect of Labor’s safeguard plan, needs the policy win, if only for his own ambitions. Without it, his 43 per cent target is largely symbolic.

But ministers are privately saying they don’t fear a safeguard failure, and believe that walking away while slamming Greens’ intransigence would be a vote winner. Rather than legislating a safeguard mechanism enabling bill, they would enforce emissions cuts on industry and resources via regulation.

Greens are equally adamant they would thrive politically if the mechanism collapses.

Said one: “Every single coal and gas project Labor approves, if they can’t accept our compromise, will be an albatross around their necks.”

The next few weeks will be a crucial test of this parliament’s ability to deliver a big policy outcome on climate. Most think a deal is still the most likely outcome.

But don’t kid yourself. The climate wars are not over yet.