Australia: Opposition hardens to climate change plan | smh.com.au

THE future of the Government's key climate change policy was uncertain yesterday as the minister, Penny Wong, renewed her attack on the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, and asked him not to block it from coming into law this year.

"The challenge will be for Mr Turnbull to stand up to the climate change sceptics in the Coalition who do not want action taken on climate change," Senator Wong said at a forum of the Australian Business Economists in Sydney.

Accusing Mr Turnbull of backing away from his support for a carbon emissions trading scheme, the policy's centrepiece, Senator Wong mocked what she called his prevarication, saying: "It is time for the curtain to close on Mr Turnbull's Hamlet soliloquy on climate change."

Despite the senator's promise to introduce draft legislation for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme soon, opposition is hardening within the Coalition and among Greens senators as businesses and environment groups remain critical of the plan.

The Opposition spokesman on the environment, Greg Hunt, said yesterday the Coalition supported the concept of emissions trading, but "what we do not support is sending Australian emissions to China along with Australian jobs".

Mr Turnbull indicated this week the Coalition would not support the scheme without large concessions from the Government, and the Opposition spokesman on emissions trading, Andrew Robb, floated the idea of supporting a carbon tax instead of an emissions trading scheme.

Senator Wong accused Mr Robb of using a carbon tax as decoy politics. "Andrew Robb and his sceptic friends know it is not going to happen, so it is perfectly safe for them to promote it," she said yesterday.