Thrust, parry in ETS battle

The Federal Government cannot guarantee that its controversial climate plan will cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions at all.

Labor and the Opposition are fiercely arguing over whose climate change plan is the best.

Both aim to reduce emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.

The target to cut emissions by 5 per cent is only reached by paying other countries to reduce their emissions.

Modelling from the Treasury Department said Australia's emissions did not begin to fall under the ETS "until the mid-2030s".

Junior climate change minister Greg Combet was unable to guarantee the ETS would reduce Australia's emissions by 2020.

When asked how much of the emission reduction would come from domestic sources, he said: "That's up to the market. The place where it is going to be the cheapest and most efficient to achieve those reductions is where it will take place first."

The Opposition's rival plan would pay farmers and others to suck emissions out of the sky and store them in plants and soil.

It's essentially a similar proposal to that of the Government, but it differs in one important aspect - emissions will not be capped.

Instead, companies will be offered incentives through a tender process to reduce emissions and be hit with a fine should polluting increase.

Under Kevin Rudd's plan, market forces would determine the price of a capped number of permits, which are handed out or sold to polluting companies. Agriculture has been excluded from Labor's plan.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott said a company that increased its emissions above "business as usual" was fined, but it is not clear what "business as usual" means, or how much the fine would be.

WAFarmers climate change spokesman Dale Park said that despite promising benefits for agriculture, farmers might not be dramatically better off under the Opposition's policy.

However, Pastoralists and Graziers Association climate change spokesman Leon Bradley has thrown his support behind the Coalition plan, claiming that although the science behind climate change is yet to be proved, Mr Abbott's plan would do less damage to the Australian economy.

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