Oz Gov't Release - A CPRS in the national interest

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www.alp.org.au/media/1109/msccwpm242.php

24th November 2009

Australia has today moved a step closer to action on climate change, after the Rudd Government this morning delivered a deal to the Opposition aimed at securing the passage of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme this week.

The package is the culmination of over a month of detailed negotiations between the Government and the Opposition, and over a decade of policy development.

Under the package, industry will receive significant new assistance to help make the transition to a low carbon future, reflecting the Opposition's demands.

The Government has also ensured the package delivers for the environment and households.

This final package on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is in the national interest: it is both environmentally credible and economically responsible.

Key elements of the package include:

* Emissions-Intensive Trade-Exposed Industries: permanently incorporating the Global Recession Buffer - which provides industries eligible for 60 per cent assistance with a 10 per cent buffer, and industries eligible for 90 per cent assistance with a 5 per cent buffer - into assistance rates. The 1.3 per cent Carbon Productivity Contribution has been retained to ensure all industries reduce their emissions.

* Coal Sector: A total of $1.5 billion in transitional assistance will be provided to the coal sector over five years. This is an increase from $750 million previously. The Government will commit $270 million to the Coal Mine Abatement Fund through the Climate Change Action Fund to assist gassy coal mines reduce emissions. In addition, the current COAG Renewable Energy Target (RET) review process will consider whether new waste coal mine gas projects should be eligible.

* Voluntary Action: The Government will ensure the CPRS takes into account voluntary action by households. Voluntary action by households will now allow Australia to go beyond our 2020 emissions reduction target. In addition, the CPRS will be amended to ensure that all existing and future purchases of GreenPower will be counted, and allow Australia to go beyond our 2020 national targets.

* Electricity Sector Adjustment Scheme: An increase of $4 billion in assistance under the ESAS, increasing the total value of permits under the ESAS from $3.3 billion to $7.3 billion. A further three new measures - a Low Emissions Transition Incentive, an Energy Security Assurance Mechanism and deferred payment arrangements - will be introduced to maintain energy security and drive the transition to a low pollution future

* Electricity Prices: A Transitional Electricity Cost Assistance Program of $1.1 billion to assist medium and large manufacturing and mining businesses with CPRS-related increases in electricity prices in the early years of the Scheme.

* Agriculture: As previously announced by the Government, agricultural emissions will be excluded from the CPRS and offsets for agricultural emissions abatement will be included.

The deal will ensure that Australia can achieve its ambitious unconditional target of 5 per cent; conditional target of up to 15 per cent and top-end target of 25 per cent off 2000 levels by 2020 if a global 450 parts per million outcome is achieved.

The deal put to the Opposition is fiscally responsible. The Government's commitment to ensure that around 90 per cent of low-income households receive assistance equivalent to 120 per cent or more of their cost of living increase has been maintained. Although the level of assistance has been modified to reflect the new carbon price estimated in the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is a major economic and environmental reform that will take Australia to a low carbon future.

It will place a limit on the carbon pollution we produce and make those that produce carbon pollution pay for it.

In early 2008, the Government made clear that it intended to fulfil its election commitment by passing the CPRS in mid 2009.

The Government first released this legislation in draft form in March.

This package has been presented to the Opposition on the basis that a vote on the Bill must be held before Parliament rises this week - six months after the Government's intended passage.

Passing the CPRS this week will give Australian businesses the certainty they need to make investments

It will also mean Australia goes to Copenhagen with a means to deliver its targets and provide a much-needed boost to negotiations on a global deal.

We have delayed action on climate change too long.

It is now time to act. We call on the Opposition to support this negotiated package and ensure a vote on this package before Parliament rises this week.

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www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/turnbull-survives-but-isolated-from-frontbench-on-ets/story-e6frgczf-1225803412845

Samantha Maiden, Online Political Editor
November 24, 2009

MALCOLM Turnbull has sparked uproar in the Coalition partyroom by trying to crunch through an emissions trading scheme deal that a majority of MPs had spoken against.

Liberal MPs claim Mr Turnbull then walked out of the marathon meeting, prompting furious efforts by Joe Hockey to reconvene talks at 8pm.

Mr Turnbull was followed by angry MPs calling him “mad”

“I got up and told him he's a caretaker leader. He's mad,” Wilson Tuckey said.

Mr Turnbull had earlier survived a call for a leadership spill after a wild partyroom meeting but has emerged from today's talks isolated from his own frontbench.

After a bombshell call from Liberal frontbencher Andrew Robb for the Coalition to reject Labor’s emissions trading deal, rebel Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey moved a spill motion against the leader.

But it failed to secure support.

Mr Turnbull is not out of the woods however, with Liberals warning his leadership could be irrevocably damaged by the day’s events.

Mr Robb’s decision to oppose the leader’s call for a deal with Labor follows open defiance from Senate leader Nick Minchin and the decision of Tony Abbott to also reverse his support for a deal.

After emerging grim-faced from the talks during question time, Mr Turnbull returned to face his critics in the partyroom this afternoon and talks are continuing.

Mr Robb’s opposition to a deal on climate change carries particular weight because he is a respected party elder and former party director and was the party’s spokesman on climate change until he took leave from the frontbench recently to fight depression.

He is also regarded as a potential leadership candidate, having failed to secure the deputy leadership in a contest with Julie Bishop after the last election.

Mr Robb's dramatic intervention today came amid anger in today's meeting over chief negotiator Ian Macfarlane's revelations that Labor predicated talks on the expectation of no deal at Copenhagen.

Earlier today, Kevin Rudd unveiled a deal to secure Coalition support for an emissions trading scheme that came with a $7 billion taxpayer-funded price tag to double assistance to the coal sector and the electricity industry.

The Prime Minister has doubled assistance to the coal sector to $1.5 billion and ensured voluntary action by householders will be taken into account under the new deal.

But while the additional expenditure will cost $7 billion over the period to 2019-20, the government and the opposition have agreed to slash the household package for low and middle income earners to recognise the lower protected carbon price, which is estimated to reduce expenditure by $5.76 billion.

"This will reduce expected price increases for goods and services and lead to a smaller rise in the overall cost of living impact of the CPRS," a statement released by the government said.

As a result, the net cost to the budget will be $204 million over the forward estimates and $769 million to the period 2019-20, compared with what was foreshadowed by the mid-year budget review.

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www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/how-malcolm-turnbull-staged-his-own-destruction/story-e6frgczf-1225803475575

Matthew Franklin, Chief political correspondent
November 25, 2009

ABOUT 7pm Malcolm Turnbull stood and, his critics argue, signed his own political suicide note.

After an all-day debate over climate change, the Opposition Leader unilaterally declared the Coalition would back Kevin Rudd's carbon emissions trading scheme.

His ruling, his opponents said, was a reckless and wilful misrepresentation of the true situation, which was that as the debate continued it became clear he did not have the numbers.

But that did not matter. Under Coalition rules, no vote is taken. The leader simply makes a decision based on his assessment of the feelings of his colleagues.

So Mr Turnbull's provocative decision - a clear strategy of crash through or crash - sparked party uproar.

Veteran West Australian MP Wilson Tuckey, a strident ETS opponent, leaped to his feet to declare he would move for a leadership spill on Thursday. "I said: you are the caretaker," Mr Tuckey told The Australian a few minutes later, insisting his leader had misrepresented the will of the party in an exhibition of his unfitness to lead.

"He's hopeless," Mr Tuckey said. "It's terminal. I think he has probably lost even more support, even from people who agree with him on climate change."

There were also complaints about the fact that Nationals senators, who had been the most vocal opponents of the ETS, were absent at the time Mr Turnbull made his call on the numbers. They were in the Senate voting on reforms to student assistance which they said would disadvantage rural students.

"He picked his time for sure," one said last night. "He waited until a lot of his opponents were out of the room."

If Mr Turnbull has miscalculated, his days as Opposition Leader are numbered. He has chosen to lay bare the deep philosophical and political differences that beset his leadership.

Like Brendan Nelson before him, Mr Turnbull is a political moderate leading a party where conservatives have strong representation.

His decision to demand the conservatives back his personal dedication to an ETS as a means to deal with climate change could well backfire and crush his hopes of becoming prime minister.

However, his supporters were last night celebrating his courage.

"He stared them down," said one senior source. "His enemies could have called for a spill last night. They knew that and they knew they wouldn't have the numbers.

"He won. This was the last partyroom meeting for the year and only he can call another one."

So it seems that, if his critics want his head, they will have to come after him with an axe.

Turnbull's opponents fall into three groups: climate change sceptics, climate change believers who doubt the efficacy of an ETS and political hardheads who wanted him to avoid an ugly public split on the floor of the Senate.

Last night, a damaging split looked inevitable as opponents continued to dispute his reading of the collective view, describing it as just other manifestation of political inexperience and inability to understand the leadership skills required in politics, as distinct from business, his previous profession.

But Turnbull was having none of it. After the meeting broke up in turmoil, he reconvened it an hour later, where he again told colleagues he was exercising his right to make a call. And in a subsequent press conference he said: "I'm not interested in Wilson Tuckey. The Nationals have always said they'll vote against it. All together, there is a majority in favour of the shadow cabinet decision. that is the fact and that is my call."

However, the risks involved in his strategy were demonstrated moments later just down the corridor, when Nationals leader Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce declared no National would support the Labor legislation. This was despite the fact that Turnbull, in deciding that his colleagues backed his position, counted on the support of his shadow cabinet, which included three Nationals.

Truss and Joyce were asked three times whether they agreed with Turnbull's reading of the numbers. They refused to endorse his calculations and said public support backed their position, whatever the Liberal leader said.

Earlier yesterday, everything was going well for Turnbull and his supporters until Andrew Robb rose to his feet.

As the former Liberal Party director, renowned for his political judgment, if not for his charisma, addressed his colleagues, it began to dawn on Turnbull they had misjudged their man. In a speech variously described by colleagues as brilliant, inspiring and masterful, Robb was explicit.

"It's not good enough," he said.

The shock revelation set on course a stunning train of events that culminated in last night's clashes. The confrontation was interrupted only for question time, where the body language spoke of an opposition at war with itself.

The MPs shuffled into question time, heads down and faces tight.

But some were still laughing. One senior Turnbull backer joked to journalists as he entered the chamber: "It's safer in here."