Apparently the reason why Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull need to agree on an emissions trading scheme in the next few weeks is because business wants "certainty". According to the Prime Minister, "business certainty" is so important that parliament should vote on the ETS legislation before we know what (if any) global agreement is reached at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December.
In New York last week, where he addressed the United Nations General Assembly (his speaking slot was in between the Brunei Crown Prince and the head of the principality of Andorra), the PM announced: "What drives my interest in Australia, and those of the government with [the] carbon pollution reduction scheme, is business certainty. The business community, through the Australian Industry Group, the Business Council of Australia, are saying they want certainty for the long term."
It's disappointing Kevin Rudd doesn't have this same concern about ensuring business certainty when it comes to his other policies. It seems the PM is happy to pick and choose when he cares about business certainty. When the government issued a press release declaring it would force Telstra to cut itself in half, the PM didn't appear too worried about business certainty for the company's 1.4 million shareholders.
Likewise, there's not too much business certainty about the government's industrial relations legislation. Employers have no idea how they are going to manage union negotiations under the new "good faith" bargaining requirements.
And then, last Friday, the Industrial Relations Commission handed down a decision as part of the government's "award modernisation" process. Potentially, white-collar professionals will be covered by industrial awards -- which was news to employer groups such as the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Amid the rush to get an ETS deal before the Copenhagen meeting, what's been forgotten is that the government isn't actually offering business any certainty anyway. As Malcolm Turnbull has pointed out, the details of how the scheme will operate are contained not in the legislation but in ministerial regulations.
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has refused to release those regulations. She's said the request that they be made public before the parliament votes on the legislation is "unprecedented". Whether the request is without precedent is not the point. The ETS itself is without precedent Wong's demand that the coalition negotiate with her rings hollow given she won't tell the Liberals what they're supposed to be negotiating about.
Beyond the issue of whether the government actually does have a genuine interest in providing business with certainty on the ETS, there's another question. It's one for the Liberals, because they're the ones being told by business to pass Labor's ETS.
The Liberals have to ask themselves whether they should give in to the government just because business says it wants "certainty". The Liberals could also ponder why it is that certainty is the best argument that business can come up with. Saying the ETS should be passed because business wants certainty completely avoids the most important question in the whole ETS debate. Which is this: is it in the national interest to pass the ETS in its current form? The answer is either yes or no. Business certainty doesn't come into it.
The "business community" is only running the "business certainty" line because that's the only fine on which it was possible to get some measure of agreement from among the range of industries and companies represented in the organisations that, according to the PM, make up the business community. Business certainty is a cop-out, designed to save company chief executives from revealing what they actually think. Do CEOs really want the certainty of bad policy in preference to the uncertainty of good policy?
What the Liberals haven't yet realised is that the business community has long ceased to speak for the national interest, if indeed it ever did so. The business community speaks for the interests of its constituent companies, nothing more, nothing less. And as some business organisations come to be dominated by professional services firms, it's completely natural that accounting, consulting and law firms should welcome an ETS. Their revenues and partnership salaries depend on it.
But the interests of a law firm that has invested millions of dollars in developing and marketing a "climate change practice" are not the same as the interests of all the other businesses in the country -- and they're not the same as the interests of an aluminium producer or a cattle farmer.
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