Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong will hold talks with the Australian Greens today about an interim climate change plan the minor party is proposing.
The government will make a third attempt on Tuesday at winning parliamentary approval for its emissions trading scheme by introducing an amended legislation package to the lower house.
In the meantime, Greens deputy leader Christine Milne will meet Senator Wong to discuss a way around a Senate impasse.
"It's a win-win all round, it actually gets a signal for a carbon price in there and creates the space to resolve the difficulties," Senator Milne told ABC Radio. Senator Wong said the government would be guided by what was environmentally effective and economically responsible.
The coalition will oppose the scheme, preferring to take direct action to address climate change. The policy, to be unveiled by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on Tuesday, is expected to include energy efficiency measures but no carbon tax. AAP saj/rl/cjb 01-02-10 0747
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Senator Wong said she hoped the Greens would take a constructive approach to the talks, despite the crossbench party helping to vote down the scheme twice in the Senate last year.
"Let's remember we would have action if the Greens had chosen not to sit with people like Senator Fielding and the Liberal Party," she told ABC Radio.
"It's a little illogical to say we need action, but then vote against it." Senator Wong also took aim at Mr Abbott's alternative plan for climate change action, saying he was "out on his own" by claiming there was a cost-free solution.
Conservatives leaders in New Zealand and the United Kingdom were not taking the same approach, she said.
Opposition finance spokesman Barnaby Joyce said the coalition's costings for its climate scheme would be released before the next election but admitted "someone" would have to pay for the measures. "But we are going to not put the screws on the Australian people in a way this new, basically, broad-based consumption tax that the Labor party had in mind." He said the coalition would announce a position that was "far more responsible". Senator Joyce said he was confident the coalition could fund its policy out of the federal budget while keeping down government debt. That position was ridiculed by Treasurer Wayne Swan who said the coalition's decision to oppose a means test on the private health insurance rebate would cost the budget $100 billion by 2050. "That's going to put a further hole in the budget," he told ABC Radio. "Nothing they say adds up at the moment." Opposition frontbencher Eric Abetz says the coalition's policy won't be a mega tax, as claimed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Sunday. "It won't be this big clunky emissions trading scheme which is a huge tax on everything, which won't have any discernible impact on climate change," he told reporters in Canberra. MORE rl/cjb
