Your taking one sentence out of a whole policy and blowing it up into something massive when in fact its only a slight point of differnce in the way you put a price on Carbon. Tony Abbott and co have done a wonderful job in turning something that is reality is small and making it into a monster. Labor have been terrible in pointing out the reality of what was really said and the massive bias of the privately owned media hasn't help.
Fact was Labor policy was always to put a price on Carbon they went to both the 2007(Howard also made the pledge to price Carbon) and 2010 elections promising a price on Carbon.
The only difference is the way it was be be priced the ALP wanted a market based system , the Greens wanted a direct price.
To get the market based system that she promised at the last election she had to break the promise on the tax (short term) either way she would have had to back down on one promise or the other as she did not win majority government and to have a minority government you need to make compromises to make it work.
Adults when faced with a change of circumstance accept that you have to make compromises , children have trouble seeing the reasoning behind the need to sometimes break a promise in order to keep a more important one.
No Spin just the truth of what actually happened and how minority governments work.
In a years time when the sky hasn't fallen and we are all still in jobs with a roof over our heads and food on the table we will wonder what all the fuss was about.
