THE national climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, has damned the Rudd Government's carbon policy as a threat to the environment, the national budget and global prosperity.
Professor Garnaut has called on the Government to make urgent changes to the policy that the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced this week.
Writing in today's Herald, Professor Garnaut urges the Government to keep open the option of a more ambitious cut to carbon emissions to keep alive the prospect of averting dangerous climate change.
While Mr Rudd has limited Australia to a maximum cut to emissions of 15 per cent by 2020, Professor Garnaut writes "the Government should keep the 25 per cent option on the table".
He argues: "Australia cannot play a strongly positive role in encouraging the global community towards the best possible outcomes if it has ruled out in advance its own participation in strong outcomes."
The Government could restore this option without unpicking its overall package, he says.
But Professor Garnaut reserves his toughest criticisms for the Government's plan to compensate the biggest polluters.
"There is no public policy justification for $3.9 billion in unconditional payments to [electricity] generators in relation to hypothetical future 'loss of asset value'.
"Never in the history of Australian public finance has so much been given without public policy purpose, by so many, to so few."
The cost to the taxpayer was likely to blow out further over five years, posing "a large risk to public finances", he writes.
Professor Garnaut is even more alarmed at the dangers posed by the Government's decision to issue free carbon permits to industries exposed to international competition, such as steel, chemicals and paper and pulp.
He writes that this is an act of protectionism that threatened to provoke other countries to follow suit.
He likens the potential to the notorious US protectionism that deepened the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Professor Garnaut was an adviser to the former prime minister Bob Hawke and a key voice in arguing an end to protectionism in the 1980s.
Mr Rudd and the premiers commissioned him to write a report on options for responding to climate change - the Garnaut Review. The final version was delivered at the end of September.
Professor Garnaut says the Government had acknowledged there was a principle involved in compensating trade-exposed companies - levelling the playing field to allow them to compete against firms from countries which had no carbon restraint.
But the Government had failed to apply the principle: "The consequences of not having a principled basis for the issue of payments are profound."
The Government, in a green paper in July, initially proposed giving these industries free carbon permits equal to a maximum of 20 per cent of the value of all permits issued.
He endorses these as "reasonable upper limits to principled initial claims".
"By contrast, the white paper's approach would see the proportion of permit value given free to trade-exposed industries rising to 45 per cent on conservative assumptions."
Under some conditions, the share could rise as high as 75 per cent, he calculates.
Fixing this was "an urgent matter for the restoration of global prosperity".
Fiji election deadline sends 'loud and clear message' PNG Correspondent Steve Marshall 11 hours 53 minutes ago
Kevin Rudd says it is time to get tough with Fiji interim leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama. (AAP: Rocky Roe)
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says an ultimatum from Pacific leaders to Fiji demanding it hold democratic elections this year or be suspended from the regional forum, is a clear and unequivocal message to the Fijian interim government.
Pacific leaders have agreed to give the Fiji's interim government until May 1 to nominate an election date and then hold elections by the end of the year.
Kevin Rudd says it is time to get tough with Fiji interim leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama.
"What has occurred here in Port Moresby is for all countries in the region to send a loud and clear message to the interim government in Fiji that they must return to the ballot box and they must send the soldiers back to the barracks," he said.
Failure by Commodore Bainimarama to meet the May deadline will see Fiji suspended from the regional forum until democratic elections do take place.
Suspension from the Pacific Islands Forum means no Fiji interim government members or officials would be allowed to attend forum meetings and Fiji would no longer benefit from funding programs.
The United States has backed the Pacific leaders ultimatum to Fiji, calling on Fiji's interim government to move immediately to restore democracy.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood says the United States is "extremely disappointed" that Commodore Frank Bainimarama did not attend the meeting and says it endorses the Pacific leaders' position. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/28/2475744.htm ///////////////////////// Fiji’s government deported the publisher for the Fiji Times Monday, January 26, a few days after the newspaper was found guilty of contempt of court and fined nearly $55,000 for printing a “scandalous” letter to the editor.
Rex Gardner, an Australian citizen, is the third foreign high-ranking media officer to be ordered out of Fiji in the past 12 months. Evan Hannah, the man Gardner replaced, was whisked out of the country in May because “he was a threat to national security.” On February 25, 2008, government officials told Russell Hunter, publisher of the Fiji Sun, he had to leave the country immediately for “conducting himself in a manner prejudicial to the peace, defence, public safety, public order, security and stability of the sovereign state of the Fiji Islands.”
Fiji authorities say that Gardner’s deportation stems from the guilty verdict handed to the Fiji Times on Thursday, January 22 for contempt of court for printing a letter to the editor criticizing the High Court for validating the legal maneuvers that dissolved Fiji’s Parliament after the December 2006 coup that brought Voreque Frank Bainimarama to power. It was Fiji’s forth coup since 1988. Gardner’s work permit was to expire at the end of February, but he was seeking a three-year extension. (Blogger reaction to the court verdict is here.)
Local and regional media commentators largely criticized the deportation, which coincides with the country’s Attorney General meeting with members of the 16-nation Pacific Island Forum in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea over Fiji’s government backing off on a promise to hold elections in March 2009. Tuesday, January 27, the organization gave Fiji a May 1 deadline to announce an election date that should take place this year or be suspended from the Forum.
Bainimarama, the country’s Prime Minister, did not attend the meeting because he is overseeing the relief efforts in the wake of recent flooding that took the lives of 11 people and caused an estimated $30 million in damages to infrastructure and crops in still incomplete assessments. Fiji is a former British colony whose population is currently composed of nearly 60 percent ethnic Fijians and slightly less than 40 percent Indo-Fijians, the descendants of immigrant workers brought to the islands by colonial rulers in the 19th century. Bainimarama has long maintained that he will not allow elections until his government has implemented changes to the nation’s electoral code that apportions seats in Parliament based on race. This process could take as long as five to 10 years, Bainimarama recently told members of the military at a parade.
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