The Australian
By: Dennis Shanahan, Jared Owens
The Rudd government has calculated the Coalition's greenhouse gas reduction scheme of planting trees and burying carbon in the soil would cost $10 billion and achieve only one-third of the aimed 5 per cent cut by 2020.
As Penny Wong pledged yesterday to introduce Labor's new emissions trading scheme into parliament next Tuesday, the Climate Change Minister said the Coalition's proposed initiative to cut carbon emissions by 150 megatonnes by 2020 would not work.
Senator Wong's department costed the proposal for seven million hectares of new forest by 2020, which would cut carbon emissions by 40 megatonnes, at $10.6bn. Senator Wong expects the opposition's new climate change policy, to be finalised at the shadow cabinet meeting on Friday, to be similar to the plan proposed last year.
Senator Wong said the government would introduce its new Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bill when parliament resumes on Tuesday.
"The government is proposing to tackle climate change by making polluters pay through the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme -- the cheapest and most effective way to reduce carbon pollution,'' Senator Wong said yesterday.
"Mr Abbott has already made clear that he refuses to make polluters pay.
"To fund his policy, Mr Abbott must explain what spending measures he will cut or what the impact will be on debt and deficit.''
Senator Wong sought the costing of the proposal, put forward by former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull, as Mr Abbott promoted his "practical'' response to greenhouse gas emissions at a farm near Tamworth in northern NSW.
The Opposition Leader spent the day at Inverary Downs on the Liverpool Plains, putting manure into the soil.
Mr Abbott said the practice, in which natural matter is broken down and absorbed into soil, captured carbon emissions that would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere.
The method also makes the soil more fertile, reversing decades of damage done by harmful fertilisers. The Liberal leader said the technique could all but neutralise Australia's carbon footprint, and he would like to see the efforts of carbon farmers recognised.
"I think that the Australian public would support any big reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions as a result of better farming practices,'' he said.
"Hopefully the message will go out to policymakers in Canberra.''
Mr Abbott said of his climate scheme: "We'll have a policy that encourages direct action, like soil carbon, to reduce emissions.''
But Cam McKellar, a biological farmer Mr Abbott described as a "leading-edge soil carbon farmer'', said he was not motivated by the prospect of offsetting carbon emissions.
Mr McKellar said he did not believe in man-made climate change.