PM steams ahead on clean coal despite polls

Canberra Times

Andrew Fraser

Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed polling which shows an overwhelming majority of Australians want the Government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, levy greenhouse polluters and end the nation's reliance on coal.

Mr Howard told Parliament yesterday that cleaning up coal-fired power was the "most important" action to fight climate change and quoted Labor premiers Peter Beattie and Steve Bracks as coal industry supporters and former federal Labor Finance Minister Peter Walsh as an opponent of Kyoto because it would do untold economic harm to Australia.

"Our position is very clear," MrHoward said. "For two years [starting with a white paper] we have been arguing the cause of clean coal technology and today we have seen the premiers of Queensland and Victoria blow the Leader of the Opposition [Kim Beazley] out of the water."

The Newspoll, commissioned by Greenpeace, the Nature Conservation Council and GetUp, found 79per cent of Australians (71 per cent of Coalition voters) wanted Kyoto ratified. Nine in 10 Australians wanted a shift away from coal and four out of five agreed that greenhouse polluters should be made to pay for their emissions.

Mr Howard sought to discount the survey as an "online poll", implying that it recorded only the responses of people who wanted to contribute.

However, Greenpeace's Danny Kennedy emphasised that the Newspoll was a nationwide telephone survey.

Deputy Opposition Whip Michael Danby raised the issue in the House, noting the survey was conducted last weekend among a sample of 1200 adults aged 18 and over with the results "post-weighted" to Australian Bureau of Statistics population estimates. This gives it the same credibility as the fortnightly Newspolls, published in The Australian, on the nation's voting intentions.

However, Mr Howard said, "I think it is the job of political leaders in this country to read opinion polls but to do what they think is right for Australia. It is as simple as that."

He branded Mr Beazley an "11th-hour convert" to Kyoto ratification and said, "Let me tell the Australian people: we listen to their views on this issue. We are aware of the need to take practical measures to address greenhouse gas emissions, but I say to them: we are not going to take measures that destroy the great comparative advantage that this country has, we are not going to be panicked into knee-jerk responses that will hobble great productive Australian industries with enormous costs that are not borne by their competitors overseas."

Australians would have to accept that fighting climate change would cost more money in the future, MrHoward said.

"I think that people, over time, will adjust but they will have to accept that things will become more expensive," he said in a radio interview.

The survey found that four in five Australians agreed that they "should be prepared to pay a little more for their energy to help investment in renewable energy sources".

Democrats leader and energy spokeswoman Lyn Allison said this flew in the face of Mr Howard's consistent arguments that Australians were not prepared to pay more for energy.

"Clearly the Prime Minister has spent too much time pandering to the coal industry and not enough time listening to his constituents," she said.

Dismissing Mr Howard's announcement this week of $60million for 42 energy projects as "small handouts", she said, "I can only hope that public opinion will serve as a wake-up call and force the Prime Minister into real action."