POLLUTION FREE FOR ALL

Mark Butler MP.

Shadow Minister for Environment

 Climate Change and Water

Date:  27 March 2015

The release of the Emissions Reduction Fund Safeguards Discussion Paper confirms the Abbott Government has no intention of meeting Australia’s existing emissions reduction target or any future targets that might be set in Paris at the end of the year. 

Under the Abbott Government’s discussion paper, the safeguards mechanism fails to provide any legal framework for companies to reduce their carbon pollution. 

In fact, it allows big polluters to set their own emissions baselines. 

If companies look like they might increase their pollution levels, they can simply apply for an increase in those baselines, penalty free. 

Worse still, electricity companies, which account for one-third of Australia’s carbon pollution, are exempt from the whole compliance process, but still eligible to apply for taxpayer funds under the ERF. 

In order to meet our emissions reduction target, and any others beyond 2020, Australia needs to have a legal cap on pollution that reduces over time in line with the best independent advice as well as our commitments and international action. 

That’s why Labor has committed to introducing an Emissions Trading Scheme which puts a legal cap in place and then lets business work out the cheapest and most effective way to operate. This is the model being adopted by Australia’s major trading partners. 

Tony Abbott has demonstrated yet again that he’s in the pocket of the big electricity companies, letting them tell him how much they want to pollute. 

This policy is nothing but a dressed up slush fund, wasting billions of taxpayers’ dollars while achieving no meaningful reduction in Australia’s pollution levels. 

It’s the most brazen capitulation to the big polluters since Tony Abbott reversed his election commitment to keep the Renewable Energy Target.