The overwhelming acceptance by the Labor party of the amendments proposed by the Coalition to the RET would lead to the Australian people’s expectation that a negotiated settlement should in general be supported.
Although we do not believe this is a perfect outcome, we did go into these negotiations in the spirit of being conciliatory and Senator Boswell shall move amendments on further protection of food processing.
We would hope that the Productivity Commission has an open mind regarding how it deals with food processing and we must continue to fight to make sure that the overheads associated with the cost of food processing does not go through the roof. Agriculture will become increasingly unviable if processing costs go beyond our competitors and this will result in the loss of Australian jobs.
The decoupling of the CPRS from the RET has been dealt with by lowering the thresholds proposed under the RET to the same as would be proposed under the ETS. This extends the coverage that had been proposed beyond the initial aluminium, silicon and news print industries, to now cover all the industries that had been included for exemptions.
Support for an RET should not be taken as a support for the ETS which still remains a new tax on so many facets of life in Australia and will do nothing to change the climate.
There is a sense in Australia that people want greater development of renewable energy for many reasons including environmental, but we are disappointed that it doesn’t include bio fuels. Bio fuels would actually reduce the price of petrol and bring about a renewable outcome with a cost benefit to the consumer as well as moving power away from the oil cartels.
Further exemptions for coal gas should be brought in line with waste gas.
It seems only sensible that we should have a strong policy debate in Australia about nuclear power.
The position within the Labor Party regarding nuclear power is archaic and it seems strange that the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate and the AWU National Secretary Paul Howes have the same position. We are being left behind in the nuclear power debate and its time to move on, away from Labor’s cold war mentality.
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