Green aim hits red tape

WHEN Australian families start asking what killed full employment, two answers can be guaranteed: trade union wage claims and the cost to industry of compliance with the Rudd government's panicked response to the climate-change bogey.

Although a growing body of scientific data suggests the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has drawn faulty conclusions from its climate modelling, the Rudd government has shown no hesitation in joining the ranks of the eco-extremists and endorsing its more dire predictions. Rather than admit that there are flaws in the IPCC's reports, the Government has embraced Sir Nicholas Stern, who has no background in climate science, and hailed him as a guru. Instead of pointing out that rejected US presidential candidate and former US vice president Al Gore has been forced by the UK courts to admit that his Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth contained errors, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd uses every available photograph to bask in Mr Gore's not inconsiderable shadow. This incautious approach has panicked the bureaucracy into preparing avalanches of briefing papers and recommendations to demonstrate its support for the Rudd government's initiatives. According to a respected environmental consultant with a major Australian organisation, the sheer weight of additional red tape that would be generated by the Rudd government's proposed Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System makes a mockeryof its stated aim of reducing bureaucratic procedure. In particular, it goes against Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner's claim that the Government would operate on the basis of one in, one out when it came to introducing additional red tape. The consultant said the Government failed that test miserably because the proposed legislation would increase duplication across the existing state, territory and national schemes. He said the planned system was also unlikely to provide the robust data necessary to support an Australian emissions-trading scheme and spectacularly failed to provide a single online entry point for company reporting. But, without doubt, the levelof duplication involved in the proposed reporting requirements was the most staggering feature of his review. Using a major Australian company he dealt with as an example, the consultant identified five different national reports and two state reports it would be expected to file this year under the proposed reporting requirements. His list of the different Acts and programs requiring individual reports included the Energy Efficiency Opportunities Act, National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, Greenhouse Challenge Plus program, National Pollutant Inventory, (particular industry) National Environment Bureau, DECC Energy Savings Action Plan (NSW) and Environment and Resource Efficiency Plans (Victoria). Within that raft of different bodies there is even further duplication created by slightly different reporting thresholds for the Energy Efficiency Opportunities Act (EEOA) and the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act (NGERA) - the difference being that the EEOA defines a business group on the basis of financial control and the NGERA uses operational control. I am pleased to report thatas late as Friday evening, some headway was being made on this particular point in talks being held in Canberra and it would seem that this wrinkle, at least, may be eliminated soon. Although the topic of red tape may seem as dry as the last drought's cow chips, it constitutes a significant cost to business. Compliance with the EEOA has been estimated by the Australian Environment Business Network to amount to 25 percent of the cost of financial reporting for a business. This is a substantial burdento companies that have already committed to - and achieved - energy efficiency. Plainly, money spent meeting the high cost of compliance reporting could be more use-fully invested in personnel and business development or even in the generation of on-site sustainable energy from auxiliary solar units which have the potential to return power to the grid. One sensible proposal would see companies encouraged to capture waste methane (which some claim is up to 75 times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period) for use in power generation. There is little doubt that most companies want to be good corporate citizens, despite the anti-business propaganda shrilled by the current Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, in his former guise as a leader of the eco-cultists, as well as the anti-development Greens. The Rudd government is, however, indebted to green activists for delivering their election-winning preferences to the ALP, and it doesn't want to lose its stranglehold on green sentiment. The reality, though, is that for all the talk of eco-tourism and alternative-energy industries replacing conventional business organisations, the Government needs to pay more attention to those who do actually drivethe economy rather than those who wish they could and those who would shut it down if they had half the chance. The sooner the Government realises that cottage industries are not going to provide jobs for the next generation of eco-friendly workers, the better.