Industry dominates emissions taskforce -

THE Prime Minister, John Howard, has chosen miners, bankers and power industry representatives to advise him on a possible carbon emissions trading system amid claims he has broken a nine-year-old promise to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
In a statement to Parliament in 1997 - about 18 months after he won office - Mr Howard unveiled a $180 million climate change plan to reduce Australia's net greenhouse gas emissions growth between 1990 to 2010 from 28 per cent to 18 per cent, not including land use changes.
But the most recent Government projection is that emissions will grow by 30 per cent in that time, excluding land use changes, the Australian Greens say.
The Greens senator Christine Milne said the lack of success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions was a damning failure.
"Ten years ago the Prime Minister, John Howard, made big promises to tackle climate change, but clearly he did not believe his own rhetoric and has failed utterly to respond to the greatest security threat of our time," Senator Milne said. "The Prime Minister's main promise was to reduce emissions growth by a third by 2010, yet emissions are increasing rapidly."
The chairwoman of Qantas, Margaret Jackson, and executives from BHP Billiton, the coal exporter Xstrata, Alumina Limited and National Australia Bank will join Mr Howard's carbon emission trading advisory group.
Mr Howard said the group would advise on the nature and design of a global emissions trading system in which Australia could participate, as well as steps in Australia to set up a system.
The Greens criticised the group, which will be chaired by Dr Peter Shergold, the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, as being "stacked with miners". Labor said it was "yet another talkfest".
Mr Howard told ABC's Insiders yesterday the group had no environmental experts because he wanted "to involve the industry" and a number of government departments were represented.
"There will be a Treasury economic viewpoint, there will be a Foreign Affairs and Trade viewpoint and there will be an environmental [department] viewpoint, and not all of the business people who are on the panel are in the resource sector," he said.
Mr Howard said the group's "sole remit will be to tell us what the shape of a global emissions trading system might take".
He said it would be "looked at against the background of preserving the natural advantages Australia has in areas like fossil fuels and uranium".
The members include: Xstrata's Peter Coates; the managing director of International Power, Tony Concannon; the director of Australian Pipeline Trust, Russell Higgins; the executive director of BHP Billiton, Chris Lynch; the chief of Alumina Limited, John Marlay; and National Australia Bank's John Stewart.
The secretaries of the departments of Treasury, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Industry, Tourism and Resources, and Environment and Heritage are also in the group, which will have its first meeting this month and report in May.
Climate change rally targets PMAbout 50 climate change protesters hung several hundred season's wishes on a Christmas tree outside Kirribilli House yesterday. But no one from the Prime Minister's residence collected a present of solar panels designed to elicit support for renewable energy.