AAP Newswire
Wednesday 26/3/2008
SYDNEY, March 26 AAP - Excluding petrol from an Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) would only increase the overall cost of moving to a low emissions economy, the government's chief climate change adviser says. Professor Ross Garnaut was asked today about moves by the federal government to consider excluding petrol from an ETS. "I wouldn't want to say anything more than what we said in the discussion paper, and that is the broader the coverage the lower the overall cost to the economy," he told reporters in Sydney today.
Prof Garnaut says electricity and petrol prices will inevitably rise under the proposed Australian ETS due to start in 2010. He highlighted the rising cost of electricity and petrol under an ETS last week, when he released his climate change discussion paper. Labor won last year's federal election after promising, among other things, to combat rising petrol prices on behalf of working families struggling under increasing costs of living.
Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt says Prof Garnaut had done what Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had refused to do - acknowledge the effect of an ETS on petrol prices. "Contrary to what he led Australians to believe, petrol will be going up rather than down under these proposals," Mr Hunt said on Thursday in response to Prof Garnaut's paper.
On Sunday, federal Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen said the government was thinking about excluding petrol companies from any ETS. Mr Bowen said excluding petrol companies was one issue under consideration in the government's forthcoming green paper on emissions trading. "We need to have a regime which cuts emissions but does not put an undue impact on those who can least afford it," he said.
"Petrol is a very important commodity for working families, for small business and for the economy as a whole and we need to be very careful about its impacts." Mr Bowen said the government still had a long way to go in developing its emissions trading scheme, which it has pledged to have up and running in 2010.
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