Emissions scheme `will mug farmers'
Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 22 Sep 2008: 6.
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"This promise will prove to be administratively and economically challenging," he said. "Unless the design is very carefully done. it will be economically damaging to many industries."
"All these things have a human cost and an economic cost, and we have not had a proper debate about the nature and extent of these costs. In most government modelling, people just assume those adjustment costs don't exist -- workers move seamlessly from one industry and one job to another without cost. In the real world, that is not the case."
"Their costs are going to rise here faster than in developing countries. We have to be cautious about the design so we don't impose something that ends up making our export industries lose competitiveness ... There is nothing to be gained by doing that."
THE Rudd Government's proposed emissions trading scheme could cost tens of thousands of jobs, drive businesses offshore and force thousands of farming families off the land, according to a leading rural economist.
Brian Fisher, executive director of Concept Economics and former head of the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics, yesterday described the ETS as a policy made on the run at the last election.
"This promise will prove to be administratively and economically challenging," he said. "Unless the design is very carefully done. it will be economically damaging to many industries."
Although farming is exempted from the ETS until at least 2015, Dr Fisher says that many small farmers will be mugged in themeantime by increases in the costs of inputs such as electricity and fertiliser.
His warning reinforces recent modelling by the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Farm Institute that predicts many businesses will be made unprofitable by the scheme.
"When you put in these sorts of policies you are going to have to have enormous structural change," Dr Fisher said.
"People say there are going to be a lot of new jobs in a lot of new industries, but who knows what these industries are? The facts are that some entrepreneur has to get the capital together, build the plants and make sure they are viable in an international context.
"People have to be retrained, move states, move industries.
"All these things have a human cost and an economic cost, and we have not had a proper debate about the nature and extent of these costs. In most government modelling, people just assume those adjustment costs don't exist -- workers move seamlessly from one industry and one job to another without cost. In the real world, that is not the case."
Dr Fisher has contributed to the past three reports of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, and unlike many rural industry professionals, he accepts there is a scientific basis for concern over man-made global warming.
However, he disputes the wisdom of Australia introducing an ETS without an international agreement, arguing that to do so would significantly disadvantage all our major emissions-intensive export industries, including cattle, gold, aluminium and copper.
"Their costs are going to rise here faster than in developing countries. We have to be cautious about the design so we don't impose something that ends up making our export industries lose competitiveness ... There is nothing to be gained by doing that."
Credit: John Stapleton
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