Australia Offers to Exempt Farming From Carbon Plan

Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Australia’s government has offered to exempt agriculture from the nation’s carbon-reduction system in an effort to get political support, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said.

“We are serious about getting this legislation through,” Wong said in a television interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp. today. “This is an offer that is made by the government on an issue that we know is important to the opposition.”

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party government wants lawmakers to vote on the legislation by the end of this month as part of a push for carbon trading to start in 2011. Opposition Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull proposed a number of changes last month, including permanently excluding farming emissions and compensation for affected businesses.

The government has said it will consider changes that are economically responsible and environmentally effective, and is prepared to talk more with the opposition.

The Australian government has called for a A$10 ($9.30) a metric ton carbon price lasting a year until July 2012, from when the market will start determining the cost. Rudd’s Labor Party wants to reduce greenhouse gases by between 5 percent and 15 percent from their 2000 levels within 10 years.

Australian upper-house lawmakers defeated the government’s proposed carbon legislation on Aug. 13. A second rejection at the senate this month would give Rudd a trigger to call an early election.

‘Massive Tax’

Barnaby Joyce, senate leader of the opposition National Party, said the exemption of farming doesn’t alter his stance on the carbon plan. The Nationals are in a coalition with Turnbull’s Liberal Party.

“Now we have a ridiculous, massive tax that exempts part of agriculture but is still not going to change the temperature of the globe,” Joyce told Sky News Australia. “It is merely a gesture.”

Joyce wants the government to delay its legislation until after about 190 nations gather in Copenhagen in December for a final round of negotiations on a climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tracy Withers in Wellington at twithers@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 14, 2009 21:57 EST