Canberra, Friday 20 November 2009
Heather Ridout and Penny Wong have this morning demonstrated the wilful ignorance, deliberate misrepresentation and deep-seated hypocrisy that characterises the current climate change debate in Australia.
Heather Ridout’s opinion piece in The Australian attacks a straw man Greens policy while promoting an economically efficient trading scheme, including transport emissions, that only the Greens’ amendments would deliver.
Penny Wong, interviewed on ABC’s AM program, repeated her call for the Opposition’s amendments to be economically and environmentally credible while simultaneously refusing to rule out more cash handouts to coal generators. She also continues to make acceptance of her woefully weak emissions reduction targets a precondition to talking to the Greens.
“This typifies the spin-over-substance approach that the Rudd Government and its backers have taken to the climate crisis,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne said.
“It’s not enough to say you care about climate change, or even to say you want action. You have to actually do what the science says is necessary because you cannot negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry.
“The great irony of Heather Ridout’s attack is that the Greens are the only party aiming to take out the Government’s $20 billion fuel excise cut which she rightly says ‘never made much sense’ and would ‘dilute the carbon price signal’.
“The Greens’ proposed amendments would implement Professor Garnaut’s mainstream economic prescription, so what nonsense for Ridout to describe our platform as ‘quixotic’ and a ‘lurch away from the CPRS market mechanism approach’. She clearly has not read our Safe Climate Bill.
“The Australian community should be deeply concerned that Minister Wong is refusing to rule out even more cash handouts to coal generators.
“Minister Wong’s hypocrisy in talking about an environmentally and economically credible scheme is breathtaking given that her CPRS will already stimulate investment in coal, and she is now laying the groundwork to make it even more friendly to the most highly polluting fuel.
“The CPRS is not just a failure – it will lock in failure by pointing Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe scientists tell us we have left.
“Everyone sweltering today across Australia and hearing Kevin Rudd linking this heatwave to climate change should be asking why it is that the Rudd Government’s policies lock us in to even worse to come.”
Senator Christine Milne
