"DIRECT ACTION" STILL A DUD

Media Release

Mark Butler  MP.

Shadow Minister for Environment

 Climate Change and Water

Date:  29 October 2014

The Abbott Government’s Direct Action policy is still a waste of taxpayers’ money, despite amendments agreed to by the Liberals, Palmer United Party and Senator Nick Xenophon.

The dirty deal cooked up by Greg Hunt, Clive Palmer and Nick Xenophon is hopelessly flawed.

Direct Action will still pay billions in taxpayer dollars to big business to reduce their pollution, rather than making the polluters pay.

And Tony Abbott’s promise to include safeguards that prevent any reductions in carbon pollution being offset by increases in carbon pollution elsewhere in the economy has been exposed as a mirage.

What we end up with is a situation where Tony Abbott will hand billions of taxpayer dollars to some polluters while others will be free to increase their pollution levels with impunity.

Over the past four years, expert after expert have agreed that Direct Action has no chance of achieving meaningful reduction in Australia’s carbon pollution levels.

Australia will be left looking utterly foolish at international forums, like next month’s G20, as countries like the US and China present serious plans to tackle climate change.

In relation to the Palmer amendments, Labor respects the work of the Climate Change Authority, but we don’t need another report to describe what’s happening in the rest of the world.

Labor had an Emissions Trading Scheme before the Senate and Clive Palmer voted with Tony Abbot to kill it.

Labor’s ETS had a legal cap on pollution which allowed business to work out the cheapest way to operate within that cap.

All Clive Palmer has achieved in his deal with Tony Abbott is a photograph of an Emissions Trading Scheme.