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COALITION MPs have urged the Rudd government to amend its emissions trading scheme further to ensure proposed US emissions laws do not disadvantage Australian farmers.
The opposition’s calls for farming to be given credits for reducing carbon emissions are part of continuing plans to delay the carbon pollution reduction scheme in the Senate when parliament resumes in August.
Senior Liberal senator Bill Heffernan said yesterday the proposed US carbon trading scheme was very different from Australia’s and would disadvantage Australian farmers who could not get carbon credits for cutting carbon emissions.
Senator Heffernan also said Australian farmers should not be penalised for methane emissions — cow farts — while Brazil and India did nothing about their much bigger national gas-emitting cattle herds.
“Brazil has three times the number of cattle than Australia and India has 10 times the number — that’s a quarter of a billion cattle,” Senator Heffernan said. “Neither Brazil nor India have any plans to do anything about it.”
Senator Heffernan, who is a member of a committee on developing northern Australia, said that if the US legislated in favour of its farmers, Australia would have “no choice but to do the same thing”.
Farming groups are also concerned that the passage of the so-called Waxman climate bill through the US Congress means American farmers will be given credits for farm practices that cut carbon emissions.
The carbon credits, which the farmers could then sell to US industry to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, mean American farmers could balance out cost rises as a result of a carbon emissions trading scheme.
Victorian Farmers Federation president Andrew Broad said yesterday the Waxman bill was “diametrically opposite” to Australia’s plans for farming under the carbon pollution reduction scheme and that it would favour American farmers competing with Australian exporters.
Opposition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb said the Waxman bill, which has not yet passed the US Senate, was another example of the need for more time to study the effects of an emissions trading scheme in Australia.
Mr Robb also denied suggestions that Malcolm Turnbull had flagged on the weekend that the Coalition would accept amendments to the Australian bill in the Senate and pass it in the August parliamentary session.
“The Coalition is looking to find what amendments would be necessary to make what is at the moment a deeply flawed scheme something that would be acceptable,” Mr Robb said on ABC radio.
He said the Coalition had always wanted to know more about the US scheme before considering the Australian proposal.
“We are concerned that we be informed by what’s happening in the US and other developments around the world,” he said.
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