The Australian Greens have warned Prime Minister Julia Gillard that a carbon pricing arrangement that provides compensation for big polluters will not get their support in parliament. Instead, more money should be channeled into clean, renewable energy projects.
The Prime Minister has said that 2011 will be a year of reform and new legislation, but the Prime Minister has already stumbled into a briar patch of criticism after announcing her government would axe or cap renewable energy and green project funding to pay for the damage caused by the QLD floods; including $370 million from the Solar Flagships and solar hot water rebate programs.
Mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto and the Minerals Council of Australia are already lobbying the government, demanding the same level of compensation they would have received under the previous Labor government’s emission trading scheme (ETS). Under that arrangement, carbon-heavy industries would receive annual cash payments from the government to cover losses until they become energy efficient enough to operate in the new, cleaner energy market.
Ms Gillard has promised not to "throw out . . . a lot of the good work that was done . . . about how to assist industry with the transition."
Greens Senator Christine Milne criticised the Prime Minister’s comments, dubbing the behaviour of the big miners as "rent seeking". She said if Labor tried to sell the same line to the committee again, it would likely be thrown out.
"The ‘hard work’ that went into designing the industry package that the parliament rejected twice, on the other hand, is best described as ‘the squeaky wheel gets the oil’," Milne stated.
Senator Milne stated it is better to spend taxpayer dollars on replacing entrenched coal with clean and renewable energy industries.
