Try again on carbon: Garnaut

Australian
Friday 17/4/2009 Page: 1

CLIMATE change adviser Ross Garnaut says it could be better for the Senate to vote down the Rudd Government's emissions trading scheme so Australia could "have another crack" at getting it right later a view a majority of senators have now said they share.

But Professor Garnaut said the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme would become "substantially better than doing nothing" if the Government agreed to changes including leaving open the possibility of a tougher 25% emissions-reduction target by 2020 as part of an ambitious global climate deal, and spending up to $3 billion a year by 2013 on research and development for low-emission technologies.

The CPRS is facing defeat when it comes before the Senate in June, with Coalition senators yesterday demanding the Government "go back to the drawing board" and come back to the Senate next year with a "properly modelled and considered plan" that takes into account the outcome of the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen in December. The Greens are demanding a more ambitious scheme, and independent senator Nick Xenophon's preference is for a completely different approach.

"There is a complex process going on now in the Senate ... if there were no changes at all (to the Government's legislation) ... it would be a line-ball call as to whether it was better to push ahead or say we'll have another crack at it and do a better one when the time is right," Professor Garnaut told the Senate select committee on climate policy in Canberra yesterday. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has repeatedly argued that the Senate should pass the scheme because it begins the process of moving to a low-carbon economy and provides business certainty, and is therefore better for business and the environment than no scheme at all.

But asked whether the scheme as proposed was "better than nothing", Professor Garnaut - the Government's top independent adviser on climate change - said it was a "really hard question". "I am still agonising over that, to be honest," he said.

Liberal senators and Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce co-wrote a dissenting report to the findings of a government-controlled Senate inquiry into the emissions trading scheme. In their report, released yesterday, they urged that "the exposure draft carbon pollution reduction scheme not be presented to parliament, and that the Government go back to the drawing board before presenting a properly modelled and considered plan that reflects the outcomes of this year's Copenhagen climate change meeting and the best interests of Australia".

In a separate report, the Greens attacked the Government's proposed target of cuts of between 5 and 15% of 2000 emission levels by 2020 as being too low, and said the free permits for trade exposed industries were too long and generous.

The Greens view is that the CPRS is not designed to drive the transition to a zero-carbon economy, but rather is intended to maintain the profitability of fossil fuel-based industries. The legislation would actively prevent the kind of emissions reductions Australia needs to achieve to play a role in the global effort to prevent climate catastrophe," the Greens say.