Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has established a multi-party committee to study options for introducing a price on carbon in a country where coal accounts for more than 80 percent of electricity production.
Gillard will chair the group, with Climate Change Minister Greg Combet serving as deputy, she said in a statement today. Greens Party Senator Christine Milne is a co-deputy chair. Wayne Swan, treasurer and deputy prime minister, will also represent the government on the panel.
The government will invite two lawmakers from the opposition Liberal-National coalition and two from the Greens Party as well as independent legislators to be on the committee, set to meet for the first time next month, Gillard said. The group will also rely on four outside advisers.
“Parliamentary members of the committee will be drawn from those who are committed to tackling climate change and who acknowledge that effectively reducing carbon pollution by 2020 will require a carbon price,” Gillard said in her statement.
The Liberal-National coalition opposition rejected the committee and said it won’t accept Gillard’s invitation to participate.
It is “unacceptable that membership of a parliamentary committee is effectively barred unless an elected representative signs up to a dictated solution in advance,” opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said in a statement today.
‘Hybrid’ Response
The committee will consider proposals including a market- based emissions-trading system, a carbon tax or a “hybrid” of both and will “usually” meet monthly, Gillard said in her statement.
Ross Garnaut, a professor and a climate change adviser to the Australian government under Kevin Rudd, is among the panel’s four outside experts.
The group includes Will Steffen, the executive director of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, and Rod Sims, a director of consulting firm Port Jackson Partners Ltd. Patricia Faulkner, chair of the Australian Social Inclusion Board, is the fourth.
Gillard pledged to set up the committee as part of an agreement with the Greens Party. The Greens received a surge in voter support in Australia’s August election after the ruling Labor Party deferred its cap-and-trade plan to reduce carbon pollution until after 2012 amid opposition from lawmakers.
