Linking people & redesigning systems
for a healthy future
Linking people & redesigning systems
for a healthy future
An Interesting interview with Ross Garnaut Reporter: Annie Guest
MARK COLVIN: Professor Ross Garnaut has been
selling his draft report on climate change at a forum in Brisbane
today. He saved his most passionate comments for the trucking industry,
rejecting its calls for compensation after emissions trading starts.
The Transport Workers' Union says the Federal Government's climate change advisor doesn't know what he's talking about.
Annie Guest reports from Brisbane.
(Sound of audience clapping)
ANNIE GUEST: The climate change roadshow played to a packed Brisbane City Hall today.
ROSS GARNAUT: Thank you Premier and that is a warm Queensland welcome. Great to be back here.
ANNIE
GUEST: And Professor Ross Garnaut reminded the 1,200-strong audience,
Queensland will get a whole lot warmer as the climate changes.
And
he highlighted other local effects of climate change in an effort to
convince them to embrace the reforms ahead. Among those effects: a
dying Great Barrier Reef and thirsty, drought-affected farms. And
there's a less discussed impact as well.
Professor Garnaut says
Queensland's big coal industry will lose export dollars, if there's a
slowdown in economic growth in developing nations because of unabated
climate change.
But it's the effects of his proposal to combat
climate change with an emissions trading scheme that includes fuel that
truck drivers are most interested in today.
The Queensland secretary of the Transport Workers' Union is Hughie Williams.
HUGHIE
WILLIAMS: Well, it's going to send the price of fuel up more than what
it is at the present time and if the price of fuel continues to rise
like it has, there's going to be many truck drivers who can't afford to
be delivering freight. These are owner-drivers.
ANNIE GUEST:
Hughie Williams says the proposed emissions trading scheme would be
keenly felt in Australia's most decentralised state of Queensland,
driving trucks off the roads.
HUGHIE WILLIAMS: The small companies that might own up to 10, 12 trucks. They'll be out of business.
And
the big companies will be struggling also because they can only recoup
their money by putting the price of their cartage up, because if fuel
goes up, cartage must go and if cartage goes up to any of the major
retail stores and so on, up goes the prices and costs of living.
ANNIE GUEST: But that's just hyperbole, according to the Federal Government's climate change advisor.
ROSS GARNAUT: I think there's a lot of exaggeration going on.
The union's Hughie Williams denies its overstating the concerns, and is demanding compensation for the industry.
HUGHIE
WILLIAMS: Truck drivers have got to be reimbursed, because if they
don't get reimbursed they can't afford to have their truck on the road.
ANNIE GUEST: Not so, says Professor Garnaut.
ROSS
GARNAUT: Well if the trucking industry says that they will jack up the
price of other goods, it means that the people who pay the higher
prices should be compensated, not the trucking industry.
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