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Greenhouse niggard to review treasury ETS modelling
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A Coalition-controlled Senate committee has hired a leading opponent of Australian action to address climate change to review Treasury’s modelling of the Government’s emissions trading scheme. In an unusual move, Brian Fisher, described in the announcement as “former Executive Director of ABARE and currently of Concept Economics” has been directly engaged by the Senate Select Committee on Fuel and Energy to conduct an “independent review” of Treasury’s modelling. The Select Committee was established in the dying days of the Coalition’s Senate majority in June and is chaired by Western Australian Liberal Senator Mathias Cormann, who is an advocate of greater “clean” energy exports, such as gas and uranium, to address climate change. Deputy Chair, NSW Labor Senator Steve Hutchins, has been critical of the impact of an ETS on jobs, as has fellow committee member, Liberal Tasmanian David Bushby. Brian Fisher’s long history of working closely with the Howard Government to delay and disrupt action on climate change has been discussed in Crikey previously — including his trenchant opposition to any attempts to regulate land-clearing. Fisher currently heads Concept Economics with right-wing economist and Liberal Party tax adviser Henry Ergas and former senior Howard staffers. He has already produced a sloppy attack on the Treasury modelling for the Minerals Council and a rather half-baked complaint about it for The Australian. Fisher also attacked the ETS and suggested farmers might be forced to kill their livestock in a rural publication. Fisher, therefore, should have automatically been excluded from any “independent” review of the modelling. However, he was appointed by the committee without a competitive tender process or other selection exercise. According to the Senate Clerk’s office, committees are exempt from Commonwealth procurement guidelines (which require tender processes for work worth more than $80,000), but must obtain approval from the President of the Senate to appoint someone. The appointment of Fisher was signed off by the President, Labor Senator John Hogg. Senator Cormann declined to reveal how much Dr Fisher would receive for the work. The task is scheduled for completion by 30 January 2009, meaning Fisher has only eight weeks to fulfil a vast set of terms of reference. They cover the impact of the global financial crisis (a particular Liberal bugbear about the Treasury modelling, despite it being irrelevant to long-term modelling) and alternative scenarios involving the lack of international agreement on an emissions target. It is also unclear how Fisher, who as a private sector economist has no access to the most recent versions of the MMRF model used by Treasury to model Australia-specific impacts of the ETS, will be able to adequately comment on issues such as the unemployment, inflation and productivity impacts. The committee has asked for “full access” to the Treasury modelling but it’s unclear whether the Government will comply with the request. Access Economics, which has also happily provided its services to rentseekers, at least has its own AE-RGEM model and doesn’t have a long history of being the chief accountant to the Howard Government’s greenhouse mafia. Cormann told Crikey that no one with expertise in the area came without baggage, but that the intention of the exercise was to “take the religion out of the climate change issue.” Fisher’s work would “provide another input into the debate”, Cormann said, particularly because the Government had not asked Treasury to model what would happen if there was no international agreement. Dr Fisher did not return Crikey’s calls. |
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7 Comments
Well to have a review a critical set of eyes is in order.
The debate is not over no matter how shrill the MMCC’ers rant.
Rudd, Wong and Garnaut are singing a very different tune to the pre- election dishonesty.
Peter Shergold’s report the basis of Coalition policy is basically appropriately being followed.
What is wrong with these morons? ETS is about preserving and improving our way of life. The alarmists out there are those wing-nuts suggesting that an ETS will destroy our economy and send us back to the dark ages. Horseshit. When the world starts trading in carbon we’re going to begin seeing some incredible things happening on the energy front - and I for one, can’t wait to be part of it. Short-sighted ball-sacks in the senate should just piss off and let us get on with the job because the sooner we start - the greater the returns.
Let’s get a real ETS … on the emission of BS by the climate change alarmists.
It is time that we attached some liability to climate change pronouncements. Want to be an alarmist? Make sure you are right, or get sued for the cost of your chicken-little prophecies.
Actually Shergold may well have gone further than Wong/Rudd/Garnaut. There was no attempt of dissimilitude that an ETS would be in Australia’s economic interest unlike the wildly dishonest Rudd.
OK over to you sundry mouthfoamers……
If Bernard is so sure that Treasury has rigorously modelled the ETS impact, then why is he alarmed by Brian Fisher’s review of Treasury modelling? Is it because Bernard cannot point to any convincing scientific evidence that climate change is man-caused? But Treasury unquestionably accepts that climate change is man-caused. Let’s look at Treasury’s economic forecasting record. We need look back no further than the last Federal Budget. Is it not a fact that Treasury was unable to forecast Australian economic conditions 6 months ahead? For an ETS to be effective, it has to heavily penalise the use of coal-derived energy, so that it forces a changeover to high-cost inefficient energy sources. This will push energy prices through the roof and cause massive restructuring of the Australian economy. Australia’s comparative advantage in low-cost efficient energy will be destroyed. The standard of living can only go backwards. Yet Treasury’s modelling fancifully points to an ETS having an insignificant impact on the economy. By the way, is not the Australian economy going into recession, if it has not already? Yet this is still seen as an opportune time to implement a hefty carbon tax. So, what faith can be placed on Treasury’s ETS modelling? Absolutely none!!
I’m not sure who I am more sick of: Rudd and his total failure to deliver on election Climate Change promises, or the oppposition’s never ending attempts to attack the govt on CC.
Perhaps they are so focussed on doing each other down that they haven’t taken in the numerous polls which state that Australians are heartily sick of the lot of them using a this global crisis to attack each other instead of it.
I think Bob Brown has got it right. The Greenhouse Mafia has them both by the balls.
I never thought I’d hear myself even think this, but it looks like it’s time to seriously consider nationalizing the ‘coal and the logging and the minerals processing industries in Australia’.
These industries profit from what Australians own through our govt, yet they behave as though they own these natural resources and not us.
We no longer have a democracy. Our govt policies are determined by these industries, who put their interests ahead of the planet and thus our future.
Enough is enough. Now I’d like to hear what Bob would do if he was PM to restore govt of the Australian people, by the Australian people, for the Australian people.
He’d have to recruit a whole lot of ‘Green candidates with common sense’ in the next 6 months, before enough people would vote them in at the next election though.
So the Rooster is back!
The failure of government to tackle the climate change issue in any meaningful way is not surpising. This government like all governments these days is full of professional negotiators. Deal makers. They don’t understand that the limits science discovers are not human constructs where minds can be changed and thinking realigned. They are imutable facts that will not be changed by hours of talk, compromise and press releases. For those who hold out hope that all will be well, that eventually the facts will prevail I think they will be greatly dissapointed. Sadly disspointment will be only a minor burden for their children. It will be their survival that will be the main preoccupation of their thinking. And a lot of thought it will take.
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I had a glimmer of hope when Howard went, however the appointment of a fairly ordinary rock singer and a even more ordinary industrial lawyer to the cause snuffed out that glimmer of hope completely. Wong’s performance on lateline when it was put to her by Tony Jones that her targets would basically guarantee the destruction of the Barrier Reef was appalling. It was gutless. She wouldn’t refute the proposal or agree with it. She just talked crap. Blind freddy can see what will happen. Perhaps if we pay the coral pollyps enough, like Fisher’s roosters they will lay the neccessary eggs.