Australia’s Labor opposition in federal parliament will not support a bid by the Australian Greens Party to block a move by the conservative Liberal-National government to abandon the future auction of carbon permits.
Revealing the decision Labor has insisted it is not giving up the fight to retain a price on carbon pollution, despite agreeing with the government move to abandon the auction of carbon permits.
The Labor Party caucus agreed today it would not make sense to proceed with the auctions, given uncertainty about the future of the policy and little interest from business to engage in the process.
However, the office of opposition environment spokesman Mark Butler said this is no way meant Labor was reneging on its commitment to an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which it is fighting to retain in the upper house Senate.
Labor’s decision is likely to infuriate the Australian Greens, who yesterday vowed to oppose the government’s move in the Senate.
The declaration, announced yesterday by Environment Minister Greg Hunt, could have been overturned had Labor backed the Australian Greens disallowance motion.
Mr Hunt argued the three auctions, scheduled to occur before June 30, were not necessary as the repeal of the carbon price laws, introduced in 2012 by the then Labor government, is “imminent” and business needs certainty about the future.
Mr Hunt’s claims about the demise of the carbon laws is dependant on a more compliant Senate taking office in July this year and then agreeing to the conservative government’s repeal legislation.
Carbon permits are bought and surrendered by companies to pay their carbon price bills and the Clean Energy Regulator is required by law to hold periodic auctions.
The regulator told a Senate estimates hearing yesterday there was no market interest in the purchase of future carbon units.
Proceeding with an auction would be fruitless and costly, it said.
Mr Butler said the government was pulling a stunt because the auctions were voluntary and cancelling them would have no impact on the future of the carbon price.
The opposition claims it would support the government’s efforts to scrap the carbon price if it was replaced by an ETS, but until then they wouldn’t entertain Mr Hunt’s “games”.
“This is a ploy by Mr Hunt to distract Australians from the fact he has no climate change policy and he is pretending this manoeuvre will lead to Labor abandoning its ETS,” Mr Butler said in a statement.
“Labor will not change its position on this.”
Labot took a policy to the last election, which it lost, to do away with the current fixed price ETS and convert it to a market based ETS, linked to the troubled European Union ETS, from July this year, a year earlier than originally planned.
