Two details of her popular general election win are worth recording. In two-party preferred votes the numbers were 50.1 per cent for Labor and 49.9 per cent for Liberal-National. In seats in the House of Representatives the result was 76 for Gillard and 74 against her.

However (and I write this with regret) there is no way she can win a fifth election, a second popular election. The fifth/second election to which I refer is the one which will take place on September 14. Speculation is useful only in respect of events beyond that date.

I begin by making these predictions.

For the House of Representatives I predict 102 seats for the Coalition, 45 for Labor and three others. Labor's seats will consist of 44 retained and one gained from the Greens, Melbourne.

Where would that leave Gillard's reputation? I compare her to Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating. They were more successful politicians than Gillard - although I think the Gillard government is the best of the three.

However, if my predictions are correct only Whitlam would have led Labor to a bigger defeat than she did.

In 1975 Whitlam Labor won 36 of the then 127 seats, or 28 per cent.

In 1996 Keating Labor won 49 of the then 148 seats, or 33 per cent.

I am predicting that Gillard Labor will have 45 of the 150 seats, or 30 per cent.

Keating ran a bad government but he benefited from the afterglow of a very successful prime minister, Bob Hawke, our best since Bob Menzies. Comparing Keating and Gillard I much prefer Gillard. However, she suffers from being a woman and, consequently, is easily mocked. Whereas today children throw sandwiches at Gillard, in 1996 adults waited with baseball bats to get Keating.

Reverting to September 14, the referendum on local government recognition will go down to defeat.

In many ways, therefore, the most interesting event on September 14 will be the election for half the Senate, 40 senators out of a total of 76.

At present (numbers which will prevail until June 30 next year) there are 31 Labor senators and nine from the Greens, total 40.

I am predicting that from July 1 next year there will be 28 Labor senators and nine from the Greens, total 37.

The big question is what is going to be the fate of the repeal legislation promised by Tony Abbott.

There will be two sets of repeal legislation.

The first will tear down Gillard's Clean Energy Future legislation, passed by the 43rd Parliament in the second half of 2011. That is popularly known as ''the carbon tax''. The second will do away with the Minerals Resource Rent Tax, popularly known as ''the mining tax''. Abbott will loudly proclaim that he has a mandate for both these repeals and the Murdoch media and the Liberal Party's propaganda machine will shout the same proposition.

However, I confidently predict that the 40 Labor-Greens senators will resist that, thus ensuring there can be no repeals before June 30, 2014.

Abbott and his colleagues will say that Labor should do ''the decent thing'' and allow repeal - in much the same way as the Coalition allowed the Rudd government to repeal Work Choices.

Here is what Labor's members and senators will say: ''All of us were elected on a platform to preserve the Clean Energy Future legislation.

''Far from defying the will of the people (as Coalition propagandists claim) we are keeping faith with those who elected us. We are obeying the will of the people.

''Coalition politicians who voted to allow the repeal of Work Choices were not acting out of any sense of morality. They were simply ashamed of themselves - and voted accordingly.

''We are proud of the achievements of the Labor government and we are certainly not in the business of voting to tear down those achievements.''

Consequently, there is no way Abbott can make any progress with repeal legislation in the short term. Nor would there be any point in having a double dissolution election which, by the way, would mean that senators elected on September 14 would never take their seats. That has never happened before.

So Abbott will bide his time, accept Senate defeats later this year and in the first half of 2014 but be aware that he may be able to make progress in the second half of next year by which time the Labor-Greens combination will have lost its majority.

The key player in the second half of next year will be Senator Nick Xenophon. On climate change he has indicated that he opposes Abbott's ''direct action'' plans. However, he has also indicated that he has some respect for the concept of an electoral mandate.

So I predict there will be a compromise in the winter of 2014. The carbon tax will go but much of the substance of Gillard's Clean Energy Future legislation will stay in place.

For that reason I predict no double dissolution. The 44th Parliament (the one elected on September 14) will be dissolved in the spring of 2016 and there will be a House of Representatives plus half-Senate election on October 23, 2016.

That would avoid a clash with the ACT election on October 16, one week earlier.

Labor, under its first post-Gillard leader, Bill Shorten, will make big gains in 2016, positioning itself well for a victory in November 2019.

Malcolm Mackerras is visiting fellow in the Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic University, Canberra Campus.

malcolm.mackerras@acu.edu.au