Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd played down speculation of a snap poll over controversial carbon laws yesterday, but emphasized his commitment to their passage ahead of global climate talks.
Center-left Rudd’s bid to pass an emissions trading bill committing Australia to emissions cuts of up to 25 percent of 2000 levels by 2020 was cast into serious doubt on Friday by an opposition revolt.
The Senate failed to meet a Friday deadline for passage of the laws, which have sparked a frontbench walkout and two leadership challenges among the deeply divided conservative opposition.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Rudd agreed to extend the upper house debate to tomorrow and said he expected the opposition to pass the laws, which are before the parliament for a second time after being rejected in August.
“Australia has a national obligation to act. We represent 1.5 percent of global emissions. We are a developed economy, and therefore have responsibility ... to undertake particular actions,” Rudd told Australian journalists at a meeting of Commonwealth leaders in Trinidad. “We want and need this legislation to be passed by the Australian Parliament.”
Failure to pass the cuts would be deeply embarrassing for pro-green Rudd ahead of next month’s global climate summit in Copenhagen, and he said it would jeopardize Australia’s ability to be “fully active in the negotiations.”
Rudd has the power to call a so-called “double dissolution” election if the Senate fails again to pass the bill, but he hosed down mounting speculation he would do so.
“I have deeply conservative views about these questions, those views have not changed,” he said. “I’ve been elected to serve a full term, and that is my intention.”
Rudd has been invited to be “friend of the chair” at next month’s global talks, and said the question of meaningful progress being made boiled down to political will.
“I can’t predict the outcome, but can I say there are, there are available to us the resources, the political will and the policy instruments to craft an effective Copenhagen agreement,” he said. “It’s there. We can do it.”
The world’s biggest polluters, China and the US, this week put forward their target for the summit.
Meanwhile, China vowed to cut carbon intensity, measured per unit of GDP, by between 40 percent and 45 percent from 2005 levels within a decade, putting its first-ever emissions targets on the table, while US President Barack Obama committed to carbon cuts of 17 percent by 2020 and promised to attend the Copenhagen talks. The talks, under the 192-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, aim to create a successor to Kyoto by crafting a post-2012 pact for curbing gases that drive global warming.
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