''One problem is that we'll end up subsidising a lot of abatement that would have occurred anyway. Another is that the plan imposes extra costs because it uses scarce tax dollars . . . All told, Direct Action involves more economic disruption for less of an environmental payoff."

Melbourne University professor John Freebairn said he favoured a carbon price because it encouraged millions of businesses and households to shift their production and consumption choices to lower pollution, lower price alternatives.

Under the Direct Action plan, however, the government will have to choose just some of the millions of different possible ways to reduce pollution while households and businesses will ''receive no signals or incentives to change their decisions''.

The apparent ideological role reversals evident in Australian climate change policy also caught the attention of the economists surveyed. Some expressed surprise at the prominent role bureaucrats will have in the Direct Action plan.

''The crowd most attuned to free markets is least attuned to the free market solution. It's a rather odd contradiction,'' AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said.