Press Release

“The Rudd Government is coming to terms with the fact that any action on climate change will dwarf the cost of inaction and that action can be safely delayed until after the next election without Australians being toasted”, Pastoralists and Graziers Association climate spokesman Leon Bradley said today.

“Any delay in the implementation of an ETS is welcomed, as the main beneficiaries of emissions trading are not the environment nor the Australian people; but the countless lawyers, speculators, accountants, politicians and self interest groups committed to ‘facilitating’ its introduction and operation.”

“Even though agriculture was to have been exempt from the proposed ETS for an initial period, growers and producers would have incurred substantial, escalating extra costs with enormous longer term implications.  Any increase in costs has an impact on food production.”

“There is now a chance that the world food and water shortage crisis will be more evident by the time the ETS comes up for renewed discussion in 2011 – and that the debate may be subject to even wider scrutiny than of today.”

“Increasingly the myth of global warming is contradicted by scientific evidence; and Australians require that the Government recognises this and abandons its efforts to drive up the cost of energy and the subsequent lowering of living standards so that industry can make long term business plans free from the threat of this false ideology.”