Greg Hunt rejects 'silly' Climate Institute report on direct action policy

Updated

A Climate Institute report criticising the Coalition's plan to cut carbon emissions has been rejected in total by Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt as "one of the silliest reports" he has ever seen.

Mr Hunt has also declared the Climate Institute "a clear partisan political organisation" which backs the ALP.

The Climate Institute report, which was based on modelling by Sinclair Knight Merz-MMA and Monash University's Centre of Policy Studies, found the Coalition would need to spend between $4 billion and $15 billion to meet Australia's pledge to cut carbon emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.

But Mr Hunt says the Coalition's Direct Action Plan will work, and has attacked the Climate Institute for being biased.

"Obviously, we reject it," he told ABC Radio's The World Today program.

"The Climate Institute is clearly a partisan organisation.

"We'll achieve our targets, we'll do it within budget, and I think the Climate Institute has some serious explanation to do.

"When they spoke to us they didn't even know if they were speaking about one year or eight years.

"This is a partisan political document from a partisan political organisation and they got their basic facts wrong."

But the Climate Institute's chief John Connor has rejected the crticisim "completely".

"We do all of this work independently," he said.

"At the last election we did a similar assessment which actually had the Coalition doing better in terms of emissions reduction than the ALP and Tony Abbott was quite happy to quote that at the time so I don't think that's a well-founded claim."

The Opposition's policy is to scrap the carbon tax in favour of a plan which involves planting trees and providing financial incentives for polluters to reduce their carbon output.

A 2010 document outlining the Direct Action Plan states the policy will cost $3.2 billion over four years.

But the Climate Institute found emissions would increase under the policy unless more money was committed.

"Even with conservative assumptions, the Coalition's policy as it is currently defined would see Australia's emissions rise about 9 per cent by 2020," Mr Connor said in a statement.

The Climate Institute notes that as the Coalition is yet to announce some details of its policy, its "modelling is based on a number of conservative assumptions about how the policy will work in practise".

And it says its assumptions are likely to overestimate the emissions reductions that would be seen under the Coalition's plan.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has turned the argument onto the Government's carbon tax, which will cede to an emissions trading scheme next July, saying it will do nothing to reduce emissions.

"The interesting thing about the Government's carbon tax measure is that it doesn't, on their own forecasting, actually reduce domestic emissions," he said.

Climate change policy is a clear point of difference between the two parties in this election - something Mr Abbott has happily acknowledged.

"We will do it very differently," he said.

"It's very different under us, it's an incentive-based scheme but we are confident the money we have set aside will purchase the emissions reductions we need."



Climate change policy: a key difference between parties

Both major parties have committed to meeting the 2020 target, and to further reduce emissions by between 15 and 25 per cent depending on global action.

But heading into the election, their policies are vastly different.

Last month Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced Labor would dump its controversial carbon price ahead of schedule and move to an emissions trading scheme.

Where do the parties stand on climate change?

Not sure about the state of play? Inform your vote using our Not sure about the state of play? Inform your vote using our policy page

The Federal Government wants to move from a fixed carbon price of $24.15 a tonne to a floating price of about $6 by July 2014, a year earlier than planned.

Under the Coalition's Direct Action Plan, funding would be allocated to projects designed to reduce emissions.

"We will support projects such as the exploration of soil carbon technologies and abatement, putting carbon back in soils and providing for a once in a generation replenishment of our farmlands," the party's Real Solutions booklet said.

Mr Abbott has also pledged $300 million over four years to create an environmental workforce known as the Green Army.

The Climate Institute found the Coalition's policy would reduce domestic carbon pollution by 200 million tonnes by 2020.

In contrast, it says Labor's current laws would see a carbon reduction of 290 million tonnes.

The modelling also found gross national income per capita would grow by around $6,900 by 2020 under the current policy, and by around $7,200 under Coalition policies.

Topics: climate-change, environment, government-and-politics, federal-elections, federal-government, emissions-trading, business-economics-and-finance, australia

First posted