BCA view on climate under fire

Age
Saturday 23/8/2008 Page: 4

ENVIRONMENTALISTS, welfare groups and unions have called for business leaders to condemn their peak lobby group, the Business Council of Australia, after it urged the Government to water down its climate change policy. "We're calling on responsible businesses who do their fair share to speak up against this," ACTU president Sharan Burrow, said yesterday. "To the BCA we say, this is not acceptable." The Climate Institute Australia's John Connor said this week's report by the BCA on the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme was disappointing.

The Government has promised compensation for affected businesses. But the BCA report calls for greater protection for heavily polluting industries, lower targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and slashing of the planned target for increased renewable energy. Mr Connor said: "Taking this approach would strangle Australia's shift to a low-carbon economy, strangle our attempts to grow cleaner and greener jobs." BCA president Greig Gailey said that the organisation supported the Government's pollution-reduction scheme, but a proposal that made businesses unviable would mean vital industries moved to other countries.