Emission scheme to go on

Hobart Mercury
Wednesday 15/10/2008 Page: 4

THE Rudd Government has rejected pressure to delay or water-down an emissions trading scheme planned for 2010 despite the world economic crisis. The Opposition and some business figures want the scheme put on hold while the world grapples with financial turmoil, but Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is unmoved. He said yesterday climate change had to be tackled and emissions trading was important. "Our ambition remains 2010. Climate change is not going to go away," he said.

"The long-terns economic cost to the entire economy, and to the entire global economy, of not acting on climate change remains formidable," he said. Business wanted consistency and predictability around emissions trading and they would get it. he vowed. The important thing was to get the scheme's design and rules right, and to neap it out early. Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, in Poland for greenhouse talks, said the financial crisis did not lessen the need to tackle climate change.

But she said the economic crisis would be taken into account in designing Australia's emissions scheme. Business heavyweight Don Voelte, chief executive of LNG company Woodside Petroleum, said emissions trading should be put on hold as the world economy withered. "Heck. I think it's off the table right now," the staunch critic of emissions trading said. "You can't put something like that in at this time until we get this whole fiscal chaos that is going on in the world straightened out."