No more rear view for Reserve | The Australian

Meanwhile, in the context of a bad Christmas and a lacklustre year ahead, business - or, more specifically, the Business Council of Australia - is under increasing political pressure to rethink its support for a 2010 start-up date for the Government's emissions trading system.

For the first time in the debate, the BCA is openly being accused by the Opposition of allowing itself to be used by the Government, despite a number of its constituent members privately opposing an early start-up. Senior National Party senator Ron Boswell took the unusual step this week of writing to the BCA's chief executive Katie Lahey to put the Coalition's case.

The former Nationals Senate leader wrote: "Yesterday in the Senate, (Climate Change Minister Penny) Wong once again used BCA support for a 2010 start date as vindication for government policy and criticism of the Coalition stance.

"The Government uses the BCA and therefore its members as a crutch to support their very flawed (carbon pollution reduction scheme). Every day new evidence emerges from companies who will be hit hard by an Australian ETS. They speak up one by one while the BCA itself remains tentative, which gives comfort to the Rudd Government to maintain the status quo.

"If business is too intimidated to roundly condemn what they know to be wrong, then business will get an intimidating outcome in return."

Taken politically rather than climatically, that could be construed as a threat.

Boswell's unease about the position of the BCA is driven by the number of BCA member resource companies that are back-channelling Coalition MPs to express their private doubts about the ETS. And there are many. "These days," Boswell says in his inimitable style, "you get a free feed in Canberra every Friday."

Boswell thinks the BCA's support for the ETS is being driven by the group's financial sector members. "I am conscious," he told Lahey, "that there are many BCA members in the financial market who will profit from an emissions trading system.

"As Australian Securities Exchange general manager (for emerging markets) Anthony Collins told the (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Research Economics) conference earlier this year: 'Indications are that the value of issuances in the Australian emissions trading scheme could be around $120billion over the next 10 years, more than twice the value of the Australian government bonds market."'

Boswell has now written to all 150 members of the BCA, asking them individually whether they support Labor's ETS in its present form. We await their replies with interest. As, no doubt, does Wong.