The coal industry says it wants the Gillard government to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan to ensure mines aren’t closed as a result of the proposed carbon tax.
Australian Coal Association chief executive Ralph Hillman and other industry leaders met with Climate Change Minister Greg Combet on Tuesday.
He says the coal industry didn’t ask the minister for more compensation.
“It really asked him to go back to the drawing board,” Mr Hillman told ABC Radio.
“This (carbon price) is going to impose an $18 billion cost on the coal industry over the next 10 years.
“This is a cost our competitors in other countries like South Africa, Indonesia, Colombia and Mongolia won’t have to wear.”
Mr Hillman said coal mining should be classified as an emissions intensive, trade-exposed industry, meaning it would be eligible to receive up to 95 per cent of its pollution permits for free.
If that isn’t possible he wants fugitive emissions released during the mining process excluded from the carbon price regime for 10 years while new clean technologies are developed.
“If you’re objective here in taxing coal mines is to cut fugitive emissions in order to meet your minus five per cent target the only way you’re going to do that is by closing mines,” he said.
Mr Hillman insists if the coal industry isn’t given special treatment there will be a decline in investment and job losses.
But there’d be no reduction in global emissions “because the coal will be mined in those other countries and the emissions will go up just the same”.
The coal association chief said he understood the $1.5 billion compensation package offered to the industry under Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme was “the starting point in the government’s position” for the carbon tax.
The coalition believes it could achieve Australia’s emissions reduction target “two or three times over” by ramping up uranium and LNG exports.
Opposition resources spokesman Ian Macfarlane says an increase would add to Australia’s emissions reduction scorecard even if it happened offshore.
“If we increased our LNG exports by 50 million tonnes and replaced coal with that, say in China or Korea or Japan, we would reduce the world’s emissions by 150 million tonnes a year,” Mr Macfarlane told ABC Radio on Wednesday.
“That’s a plus that Australia should be given credit for.”
Similarly, the coalition believes increasing Australia’s uranium exports from 10,000 to 37,000 tonnes by 2030 could cut down 1.4 billion tonnes of carbon pollution a year.
Mr Macfarlane said boosting uranium and LNG exports, combined with the coalition’s direct action policy, would see Australia achieve its aim of a five per cent cut to emissions by 2020.
“We’ll actually do it two or three times over.
“The reality is we don’t have to do it through a carbon tax – by taxing our own industries out of existence.”
Mr Macfarlane backed comments from the Australian Workers Union’s South Australian branch suggesting industrial towns will go belly-up as a result of the tax.
“(The carbon tax) is to make the high emitting industries basically shut down.
“And in the lack of an international trading scheme of course the industries will just move overseas.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has hit back at big business after being sent numerous letters raising concerns about the carbon tax.
The Business Council of Australia (BCA) wrote to Ms Gillard last week saying it was disappointed Labor was determining the allocation of revenue before the tax’s design was finalised.
The government has promised more than 50 per cent of revenue will go to households.
The council also argued compensation promised to industry under the 2008 CPRS wasn’t sufficient.
But now the prime minister has written back challenging the BCA on whether it supports action on climate change at all.
“I would appreciate it if, on behalf of the BCA, you are able to indicate whether or not you support the unconditional emissions reduction target of reducing Australia’s emissions,” Ms Gillard’s letter states.
“I would also appreciate your views on whether the BCA agrees that the preferred means of achieving this unconditional target is through using a market mechanism to put a price on carbon.”
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