Free to sketch the big picture

THE Climate Change Minister clearly understands what the main game in his portfolio is.

WITH home insulation stuffed, solar credits facing a sunset and green loans cancelled, Greg Combet is much better placed to concentrate on negotiations for a carbon price that benefits the economy and community.

The Climate Change Minister clearly understands what the main game in his portfolio is.

That is to concentrate on the big picture and jettison feel-good programs that have the potential to blow up in the government's face.

A green army employed by government to tell households how to spend public money improving their energy efficiency may be appealing to some people, but it is clearly fraught with risk both for public safety and the community wallet.

Mr Combet's experience sweeping up Kevin Rudd and Peter Garrett's home insulation debacle has clearly honed his antennae to understand how badly things can go wrong.

And where the government has previously been prepared to push on regardless of warnings that danger lies ahead, Mr Combet has wisely chosen to blow the whistle.

There are appropriate transitional and compensation arrangements to wind things down, but the bottom line in yesterday's Green Loans and Green Start announcement is that things have to get a lot more professional in the home energy advice industry before it can be trusted to act on the government's behalf.

Mr Combet could also find some unfinished business in the mandatory renewable energy target, which forces power utilities and big power consumers to sponsor inefficient power generation to the detriment of electricity consumers and for little net environmental benefit.

And if he could, Mr Combet would be wise to put a bullet to the cash-for-clunkers scheme that is a high-cost way of getting gas-guzzlers off the roads.

But the fact that cash for clunkers has been parked with Industry Minister Kim Carr, not Mr Combet, underscores the reality that this dud policy is actually a protectionist sop to the car industry, masquerading as low-rent environmental tokenism - the sort of thing Mr Combet has shown he is not buying.