Fed: Carbon market would have to protect industry - Howard

AAP General News (Australia)
02-11-2007
Fed: Carbon market would have to protect industry - Howard

CANBERRA, Feb 11 AAP - Prime Minister John Howard said today he would not introduce
a greenhouse emissions trading market if it made Australian industry less competitive.

Mr Howard dismissed plans by the state governments to start a carbon market, saying
a national market would have to be compatible with rest of the world.

"I'm not going to adopt an emissions trading system in Australia that burdens our industries
whilst allowing others that are less efficient and greater pollutants (sic) to get an
unfair advantage," the prime minister told the Nine Network.

A task force on emissions trading is scheduled to report to the prime minister in May.

"What I'm doing through this joint business task force is working on both a feasible
global response to emissions trading and how that would interact with a domestic one,"

Mr Howard told the Sunday program.

"I don't think you seriously do this work unless you engage the business community,
unless you engage the mining companies, you engage the energy companies, the people whose
businesses and whose employees, whose workers, are going to be affected perhaps adversely
if we get it wrong."

Mr Howard also questioned the Labor Party's vow to preserve coal mining in the face
of Australian Greens' calls for the industry to be axed to combat global warming.

"The Labor Party has a track record of caving into the Greens to get their preferences,"

said Mr Howard, referring to the party's Tasmanian forests policy at the 2004 election.

"I would say to the coal miners of Australia just as I said to the forestry workers
of Tasmania, you can rely on the coalition to put jobs ahead of ideology."

Industry and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane, meanwhile, said it would take about
15 years to introduce nuclear power in Australia because of the need for bipartisan support.

The government says Australia may need nuclear power in the future because of its zero
emissions and the higher cost of clean coal technology.

"The earliest you could build a nuclear power station in Australia on the basis of
that is probably not until after 2020," Mr Macfarlane told Sky News.

AAP pw/wjf/it/bwl

KEYWORD: CLIMATE HOWARD

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