Libs fend off PM's climate assault

KEVIN Rudd has seized on an admission by the man tasked to cost Tony Abbott's rival climate change plan that Australia needs an ETS.

KEVIN Rudd has seized on an admission by a top economist commissioned to cost Tony Abbott's rival climate change plan that Australia needs an emissions trading scheme.

But the Coalition has hit back, accusing the Prime Minister of not coming clean about US President Barack Obama's own admission that his cap-and-trade scheme to reduce greenhouse gases may be put on a legislative backburner.

Mr Rudd and Mr Abbott traded blows in question time today over the government's market-based ETS, which would force businesses to buy permits to pollute, and the Liberals' alternative plan, which would reward polluters who improved their practices with taxpayers' money.

The government attempted to undermine Mr Abbott's policy by repeating the words of man commissioned to cost the Coalition plan, Frontier Economics director Danny Price.

In an interview with Radio 2GB yesterday, Mr Price clearly stated that the world clearly needed to move to an ETS.
``I think the world ultimately needs to move to an emissions trading scheme,'' he said.

``But I really dislike the Rudd government's scheme. It is almost the worst way in which to put a trading scheme together.

``So I'm in favour ultimately of a trading scheme. I think something that much closer to what (independent Senator Nick) Xenophon has promoted is far more sensible for Australia.''

Mr Price also said he looked at the quantity of the abatement of greenhouse gas emissions when analysing Mr Abbott's rival policy plan and whether the costs added up. ``We have never said anything about whether it is more cost effective than a CPRS,'' he said.

Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt said it was the Prime Minister who had failed to make clear to parliament that Mr Price had also criticised Mr Rudd's ETS or update the house of the developments in the US.

``The news overnight that the United States is unlikely to adopt an emissions trading scheme is proof that the Rudd government's emission trading scheme is dead,'' Mr Hunt said.

``Prime Minister Rudd has failed today to tell the house the decision of President Obama and how the Rudd Government ETS is now friendless, lonely and inappropriate for Australia.''

Answering questions at a town-hall meeting in the US this week about green jobs and the cap-and-trade legislation, Mr Obama said: ``The only thing I would say about it is this: we may be able to separate these things out. And it's possible that that's where the Senate ends up.''

It was the first time the Obama administration had seriously flagged in public the idea it may split up the climate bill.

A White House spokesman later played down the President's comments, arguing Mr Obama still favoured a bill that would combine measures to encourage jobs in green-energy fields with the establishment of a trading mechanism for emissions.

In his State of the Union speech last week, Mr Obama called for ``a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America''.