Adelaide Advertiser
Thursday 4/2/2010 Page: 1
Tony Abbott's "simple" plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions cannot achieve the cuts claimed and will instead result in an increase in national carbon dioxide emissions, new confidential modelling obtained by The Advertiser shows. The internal document's release is the latest shot in an increasingly heated row and suggests climate change has cemented itself firmly in the middle of the election-year battleground. Both parties are now desperate to portray the other's policy as unworkable.
The damning finding is contained in an official "in-confidence" briefing note dated February 3, 2010, to Climate Change Minister Penny Wong from her Climate Change Department. It comes just one day after Mr Abbott, above, released his alternative taxpayer-funded proposal for a $2.5 billion emissions fund to pay big polluters to cut emissions. This is set to cost $10 billion over the 10 years to 2020.
Mr Abbott, who derides the Government's proposed emissions trading scheme as "a giant money-go-round", and "a great big tax", has said his alternative fund and other measures in his $3.2 billion unfunded plan would reduce emissions by 5% on 2000 levels by 2020 - the same minimum target guaranteed by the Government. But the Climate Change Department's modelling severely questions the effectiveness of the Opposition approach.
It suggests the planned $15-a-tonne payment to companies would be far too low and would more likely cost taxpayers $50 a tonne by 2020. And it says the aim of taking 140 million tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the system via the fund would be unachievable. "We do not believe that it is realistic to expect any more than around 40 million tonnes of abatement in 2020 using this mechanism if the scheme is capped at $1.2 billion on average," the department brief says.
"In other words, we believe that (the) proposed scheme would deliver less than a third of the required abatement for the 5% target at the proposed funding level - the result of this would be that emissions in 2020 would be 13% above 2000 levels if no other policies were put in place." Signed by the department's deputy secretary, Blair Comely, the brief states that all assumptions are conservative.
The Opposition is expected to attack the independence of the advice because the Climate Change Department is committed to the emissions trading scheme it has been instrumental in formulating. But the analysis is a blow to the Abbott plan, which is already under attack from green groups because it does not include a price on carbon and therefore no market based incentive for polluters to cut emissions. The Opposition also has been embarrassed by the patchy performance of its newly appointed finance spokesman, outspoken Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce.
In a speech at the National Press Club, the former chartered accountant repeatedly used the word "million" when he meant "billion". At one stage he effectively called for Australia to stop sending $50 million in aid money to the World Bank to help poor nations address food inflation, declaring the money would be better spent here. He also appeared to favour spending nothing on the economic stimulus even though the Opposition had previously advocated halving the Government's more than $42 billion package.
Once described by his leader as "the best retail politician in Australia", Senator Joyce's speech suggested he had some way to go to build the economic credibility needed for such a role. It also raised eyebrows on his own side with one Liberal MP saying his appointment was a risk. "We were doing well with him as a renegade National, but as an economic figure he's just as likely to blow us up as the other lot." the MP said.
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