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FEDERAL Member for Grey Rowan Ramsey has attacked the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s carbon trading plan, announced last week.
While Mr Ramsey said he wass pleased the Federal Government government had “finally listened to the concerns of industry”, he said it would take some time for stakeholders to fully realise the impact of the Government’s 800 page Emissions Trading Scheme report.
After lobbying for adjustments to the scheme to help keep vital industries in Australia, Mr Ramsey said he was pleased the Government had recognised the enormous difficulties with the proposals put forward in the Green Paper during August and that it had made some attempt to address them.
“It is important we understand what the implications for jobs in Australia is under a range of scenarios where the rest of the world may not become as involved in emissions reductions as the optimistic assumptions made in the Treasury modelling,” Mr Ramsey said.
“We need to know what will happen if we don’t get the ‘best case’ scenario.”
Mr Ramsey also said that environmentalist were critical of the start-up target of five per cent as being ‘too low’ because of basic flaws in the Government’s scheme.
“The low target is a direct result of a flawed scheme which has inflicted all kinds of unfair penalties on local industries,” Mr Ramsey said.
“Inevitably the Government has had to wind down the target to avoid inflicting large-scale job losses on the community.
“It is of the greatest importance that the government take the time to make the changes needed to get an ETS, which will deliver genuine cuts in emissions and strong industries in Australia capable of supporting our workers in jobs.
He said a ‘patch-up’ attempt would not suffice.
“We need it right from the bottom up.”
“While I’m a strong supporter of green energy, we don’t want to saddle people with an emissions scheme that is going to put industries out of business or force them to relocate to countries where emission rates are a lot worse than Australia.
“The Federal Government is trying to rush this in order to meet an electoral commitment and while the the changes in the White Paper are a step forward, the unconditional rush by the government to meet an electoral commitment is dangerous.
“It’s very complex and it will take some time to get through the detail.”
* Extract from a full report in Stock Journal, December 25 issue.
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