30-September-2008
Portfolio Media Releases, Environment, Emissions Trading Scheme
Topics: Professor Garnaut Report, Emissions Trading Scheme
Presenter: The Federal Government’s advisor on climate change, Professor Ross Garnaut brings down his final report today. Professor Garnaut is expected to propose modest climate change targets believing anything more ambitious is simply not possible. To look at the release of the key report we are joined by the Opposition spokesman on Emissions Trading, Andrew Robb. He is speaking with Marius Benson.
MARIUS BENSON: Andrew Robb, The Garnaut Report is coming out today, the final report from Professor Garnaut. How much importance do you attach to it?
ANDREW ROBB: Well the Government doesn’t seem to attach a great deal of importance. They did initially but for with the 2nd Report they seemed to relegate the Garnaut Report to just another contributor to the many hundreds of reports that are coming in response to the Green Paper, so I think the real issue is not so much about what is in the Garnaut Report but what the Government is going to do. They have had now 12 months and still no-one really has any idea about the critical details of the emissions trading scheme that they’ve got in mind.
MARIUS BENSON: Even the big picture is still fairly confused for a lot of people. Ross Garnaut in his last report was suggesting that perhaps a 10% cut by 2020 in emissions would be realistic. Scientists say that if you do that you will have no real effect, that if you want to keep temperature change within a less than potentially catastrophic range you have to have cuts of 25%. Do you believe Professor Garnaut’s 10% is a sensible suggestion or fiddling at the edges as scientists seem to suggest?
ANDREW ROBB: What we obviously need is a scheme that will achieve carbon reductions without compromising Australia’s future economic sustainability and that is why we have been urging, everyone has been urging, the government for many months now, to release its own treasury modelling. It was supposed to be out in July. The Green Paper came out, the time for submissions to the Green Paper have already closed and still no economic modelling and so the answer to your question is really not able to be determined until that economic modelling is revealed. The whole thing has become somewhat of a shemozzle we are nearly now 20 months away from the start date, 20 months from when the thing will go into operation and industry and the community still have absolutely no idea of what the caps will be, the price will be, the economic impact will be, and the government really has dropped the ball on this. We are currently having a debate largely in ignorance because of the economic modelling that has not been delivered.
MARIUS BENSON: For all the confusion there is a small amount of certainty, Professor Garnaut, all the scientists say, if you don’t take radical action with quite strong proposals, say a 20% reduction in emissions by 2020, for a start the barrier reef is gone. Is that simply a price we have to pay, the loss of the Barrier Reef?
ANDREW ROBB: Well again we don’t understand the impact of some of this until it is properly modelled; also we have to look at the compatibility with what is happening internationally. As Penny Wong has said, even overnight, if we cannot get the rest of the world to take significant and appropriate actions, then it is very difficult for Australia to influence the world climate. We do only generate 1.5% of the world’s greenhouse emissions. This is something that must be a global response because a tonne of CO2 in Sydney is the same as a tone of CO2 in Shanghai in terms of its impact on climate change.
MARIUS BENSON: Andrew Robb, I will have to leave it there. Thank you very much.
ANDREW ROBB: My pleasure, thank you Marius.
Media Contact: Stuart Eaton, 0433 298 620