Ex-Lib minister to lead carbon trust

Australian
Wednesday 22/7/2009 Page: 4

Kevin Rudd has appointed Howard government environment minister Robert Hill to head a new carbon trust, in a move that causes further discomfort for Malcolm Turnbull as he struggles with an opposition partyroom deeply divided on climate change. Appearing alongside the Prime Minister and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong at the launch of the Brisbane-based trust yesterday, Professor Hill pointed out that he had started work on a cap-and-trade emissions trading system for Australia almost a decade ago.

"The political time wasn't right then. Perhaps it's getting closer. But basically, as with most Western nations, I think a cap-and-trade (emissions trading system) is the way to go," he said. Professor Hill said the carbon trust which will administer $50 million in seed funding for business-sector energy efficiency as well as a fund to register small individual financial contributions to emission reductions was not "politically partisan".

As environment minister, Professor Hill secured a special deal for Australia under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set binding emission reduction targets for developed countries for the period up to 2012.

He won both a domestic target that allowed Australia to increase emissions compared with 1990 levels by 8%, rather than the absolute reductions imposed on most developed economies, and a special rule that allowed Australia to get a long way towards the required emission reductions because of the end of large-scale land clearing, especially in Queensland.

But the Howard government then decided not to ratify the protocol after US president George W. Bush's administration refused to do so. Opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey yesterday welcomed Professor Hill's appointment, but said: "The Prime Minister shouldn't feel the need only to pay for former Liberals to give him advice; current Liberals are ready to give him advice about his current (emissions trading) scheme."

The new energy efficiency savings pledge fund allows individuals to make tax deductible donations, which will be used to buy emission permits and remove them from the market, reducing the permits available to industry. It was set up to allay concerns that individual action would not be "rewarded" in the new carbon market, but has been criticised by some as tokenistic.

Greens leader Bob Brown, who opposes the ETS on the grounds that it is too weak, said the appointment of Professor Hill had more to do with "wedging" the Coalition than helping the environment. Professor Hill told The Australian "the test of the fund will be the extent to which people use it to buy out carbon permits". The energy efficiency fund for business is modelled on the successful UK carbon trust set up in 2001, but the British have not implemented a fund for individual action.