Christy Clark has a full agenda as she prepares to become premier next week. She needs to choose a new cabinet, put key staff members in place and set a list of realistic priorities.

We are sure that many people are trying to push their pet projects to the top of her to-do list, but really, there is only one that matters right now -and it's a big one, so big it will affect every other major decision Clark makes while she is premier.

What about the harmonized sales tax? And if we don't have the HST, then what?

Clark wants the referendum on the tax brought forward by three months, giving voters a chance to decide the fate of the tax on June 24 rather than in September. She has also said that groups in favour of or opposed to the tax should both get government money to help us decide how to vote.

There is not much time. Clark is putting the pro-tax forces at a decided disadvantage.

The government's public relations efforts on the tax in 2009 and 2010 were, to be kind, abysmal. As has been said many times already, the problem with the HST was not the tax itself, but the way it was dumped on us a few weeks after a general election.

Does the government have a new sales pitch lined up? Given that so much of the government's work has been on hold since Premier Gordon Campbell resigned in November, a victim of the HST, it's doubtful that any new strategy will be better than the old one.

It seems that much of the initial anger over the tax has eased. But if time is healing the wound, why rush the vote?

The anti-tax forces are well-organized. They managed to collect 700,000 names from people who wanted the HST killed, and have put together a series of recall campaigns with Liberal MLAs as their targets.

Recalls have not worked so far -and probably never will, given that the lightning rod named Campbell has stepped aside -but the volunteers working on them could be quickly redirected to the referendum campaign.

That means a small army fighting the tax, even without the promise of government funding. And to what end?

Yes, the tax is unpopular. But the government needs money to function. Taxes need to be collected, one way or another. If the HST is killed in the referendum, it will have to be replaced, and the government needs to have some idea about how to do that.

Would we see the provincial sales tax and the GST return? That would ease concerns about the way the HST shifted the tax load onto consumers -but what about the $1.6 billion in transition money already received from the federal government? And what about the rebate cheques already sent to low-income individuals?

What a mess, in other words.

Clark says she will not give us a new budget until she knows what happens to the HST -and that is sensible enough.

The result, however, is that much of the government will remain on hold, since money has been allocated to individual ministries already. That limits her options.

Our new premier has promised change. Killing the HST would be one change that we really don't need -yet so far, the government seems to be doing little to ensure that it wins a hurried-up referendum.