Big corporates call for carbon credits for Aussies

A group of leading companies, including Visy Industries, BP Australia, Insurance Australia Group, Origin Energy, Swiss Re and Westpac called on the Commonwealth Government to set up a national carbon trading scheme.
The six-company Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change is a part of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA). Business could not act effectively on climate change without a government-sponsored carbon trading policy, said Visy Industries chief executive Harry Debney, addressing a CEDA luncheon on 20 July, 2006. "We need more policy certainty to achieve the long-term investments needed to really change the game," he said. "We will never really achieve the optimum policy in water as we won't with energy unless we have the right economic signals. A carbon trading signal of some form has to be developed."
BP Australia environmental affairs adviser Fiona Wild said that by not taking action on climate change today "we are not only making the task a lot harder, we are also making it more expensive".
The federal government has ruled out a national carbon trading scheme.