Duel fought over rival climate schemes

One side used a bucket of ice cream and the other a battery of numbers as the latest
ammunition as the federal government and opposition continued their battle over
climate change policies.
The government wants an emissions trading scheme which puts a price on carbon
pollution, while the opposition wants to pay farmers and others to capture and store
the greenhouse gas emissions already in the air.
The two major parties are locked in a confusing battle over their schemes, drilling
down into fine details and throwing numbers at each other.
The opposition has attacked the government over the cost of the ETS to the family
budget, saying it will force up electricity prices and many households will not be
fully compensated.
"His great big new tax is a massive slug on Australian families," Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott told parliament.
Earlier, he had gone to a Canberra supermarket, pointing out rising electricity
prices would push up prices on groceries, including a bucket of ice cream.
Mr Abbott also said US President Barack Obama was planning on dropping his ETS.
Reports from the US indicate Mr Obama, who faces a battle getting his scheme through
the Senate, is preparing for the ETS not to pass, although the chances are better
for a high-profile renewable energy bill.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd acknowledged the American ETS could be in trouble, saying:
"The Senate in the United States is not necessarily going to be accommodating of (Mr
Obama's) aspirations to introduce an emissions trading scheme".
Mr Rudd attacked the opposition's climate scheme, which will cost taxpayers $1.1
billion a year and aims to reduce emissions by five per cent by 2020.
Mr Rudd pointed to a three-page analysis from the government's Department of Climate
Change saying the opposition's scheme would see emissions rise by 13 per cent,
instead of fall by five per cent.
The analysis says capturing and storing emissions would cost far more per tonne than
the opposition claims. Mr Rudd told parliament the opposition's scheme "does not
come within a bull's roar" of a five per cent cut.
But Mr Abbott rejected the finding and questioned the value of the document, which
does not show how the government bureaucrats arrived at the conclusions.
"They haven't released the modelling and that's why this is a fundamentally
dishonest exercise," he told ABC Radio.
Some business groups have welcomed the opposition's climate policy, although others
have reserved judgment while they look into it. Green groups have panned it.
The government's ETS was debated in the House of Representatives on Thursday, but it
appears doomed in the Senate because no other party supports it. The scheme has been
voted down twice already, and the government could use that to go to a
double-dissolution election.