Investors call for clear policy on carbon

CLANCY YEATES AND MATHEW MURPHY

July 24, 2010

BILLIONS of dollars in planned investment that has been frozen by carbon policy uncertainty is set to remain under a cloud, despite the government's latest moves to curb emissions.

While business groups cautiously welcomed Julia Gillard's carbon policies yesterday, big investors in the energy sector said the changes would do little to shift funding towards cleaner fuels.

Under Labor's proposal, all new coal-fired power stations would face new emissions standards and have to be ''carbon-capture and storage ready''. The government claims this will send investors a powerful signal to invest in cleaner energy, including gas and renewable power.

But energy sector sources said the new policy did nothing to address the key question hanging over their investment decisions - what, if any, carbon price to factor in.

Power companies have already slashed $10 billion off their spending plans over the next five years because of policy uncertainty, a report from the Energy Supply Association of Australia said this week.

Greens say policy belongs with Hollowmen

Friday, 23 July 2010 14:12 Neville Gillmore

Greens say policy belongs with Hollowmen

Updated: 12:00, Friday July 23, 2010

Labor's climate change policy has been described as a farcical stunt straight from the script of television's political satire The Hollowmen.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard outlined the policy on Thursday, pledging $1 billion over 10 years to make the national electricity grid more friendly to renewable energy.

Ms Gillard also promised tougher standards for new coal-fired power stations.

The prime minister also outlined plans for a citizens' assembly of 150 people to discuss issues including an emissions trading scheme, which Labor will review in 2012.

The Australian Greens were less than impressed, saying the announcement added hot air to the global warming problem.

Climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne described the assembly as a 'gabfest' and 'ideally suited to the Hollowmen', the ABC's hit comedy series.

'The real community representative assembly is actually up for election right now,' she told reporters in Canberra.

Labor will try to 'hide behind' the assembly's mandate to reach community consensus, when the Greens insist on a carbon price, Senator Milne warned.

'The prime minister is not going to be able to get away with (that).'

Senator Milne welcomed the $1 billion investment but said it wouldn't 'take the grid very far at all'.

Business- and climate-conscious voters would have 'nowhere to go' but the Greens if they wanted to see action, she said.

'Vote Green and give us the power in the Senate to ... embarrass whichever party is in government into (action) on a carbon price.'

Last Updated ( Friday, 23 July 2010 14:15 )

Population policy: 'Civil war' talks over city growth

Wednesday, 21 July 2010 10:59 Neville Gillmore

Population policy: 'Civil war' talk over city growth

by Staff Writers
From: news.com.au
July 21, 2010 9:02AM
98 comments

IN the nation's largest city, the population pressures are building so much that they are starting to talk as though they are caught up in a civil war.

In western Sydney, local leaders are referring to a "common enemy". But it's not a shallow rejection of asylum seekers or other migrants, it's a resentment of the other side of town.

Already home to one in 10 Australians, the city's west is getting ready to fight the eastern suburbs and north shore for its share of trains, roads and jobs. "There is a common enemy, they live in Woollahra and Mosman," Christopher Brown, from a tourism and transport forum, said in reference to ritzy Sydney suburbs.

"We should stand up ... and say we are not going to take it any more," he said, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Gillard first to pull population lever

Wednesday, 21 July 2010 01:35 Neville Gillmore

Gillard first to pull population lever

Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large
From: The Australian
July 21, 2010 12:00AM

JULIA Gillard's comments yesterday put the issue beyond doubt -- she is the first Prime Minister to seek election on the platform of a smaller growing Australia and rejects the current growth model as "irresponsible".

It seems Gillard's over-arching election strategy is to slow Australia's population growth, a populist pitch long available to Australia's leaders and long resisted.

In the 60-plus years of postwar immigration, infrastructure investment has lagged people arrivals. It always does and it always will. This argument could have been deployed at any time in history to slow population growth but Gillard is the first Prime Minister to pull this lever.

Labor has decided on a poll-driven approach to probably Australia's most important public policy achievement in its first century.

The issue is not that Australia needs better infrastructure and superior urban co-ordination and environmental planning. It does, undoubtedly.

But Gillard chooses to convert this into a political campaign for lower population growth.

It is a sure winner and a beautiful pitch to Greens, Hansonites and marginal seat voters in the suburbs with its nostalgic invocation of preserving "clean beaches and precious open spaces" that define "our Australian sanctuary".

The Generator

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