On Nine To Noon this morning, Kathryn Ryan interviews business commentato Rod Oram [audio] on the ETS. His assessment? The amendments are almost entirely technical, while the substantive changes address many of the concerns of the business community. Whether this is regarded as an "improvement" I guess depends on how you feel about corporate welfare for polluters. He sums up by quoting the Business Council for Sustainable Development:
The bill has been made as quote gentle and generous as it could be. In other words, emitters get off really very lightly, so almost all of the cost over say the next ten or fifteen years is actually borne by taxpayers not by the companies.Which really makes you wonder what it would take to make our business community happy.
As for National, Oram assesses their objections as entirely dishonest, particularly when it comes to "aligning with Australia" (which is actually trivially easy and doesn't require us to delay implementation at all). But then, did we really expect any different?
