TWO Liberal senators are reserving their right to cross the floor and vote for the emissions trading scheme next month, leaving the fate of the scheme at the mercy of the Greens.
Sue Boyce, from Queensland, and Judith Troeth, from Victoria, crossed the floor to vote for the ETS in the Senate last year in defiance of their new leader, Tony Abbott.
They said yesterday they were reserving their right to do the same again. The Government needs seven Senate votes to pass the scheme, which means the five Greens who voted to defeat the scheme last year would need a change of heart.
The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, said yesterday she would meet the Greens next week, but at this stage the minor party is holding out for a scheme far more ambitious than that which will be reintroduced into Parliament next week.
In accordance with an agreement all countries made at the Copenhagen conference to announce their proposed emissions reduction targets before January 31, Senator Wong yesterday announced Australia would stick to its conditional range of cutting emissions by between five per cent and 25 per cent by 2020.
In a sign of exasperation, she said Australia would lock in the unconditional target of 5pc by the end of next year if a binding global agreement had not been reached by then.
The Greens and climate groups were unimpressed, saying it was agreed at Copenhagen to announce a specific target, not a conditional range.
''They will continue to hold back global progress with an upper limit of 25pc that is still far too low, let alone the woeful 5pc,'' a Greens Senator, Christine Milne, said.
The proposed scheme would begin in July 2011, but the price of carbon would be fixed for the first year at $10. From July 1, 2012, it would be set by market forces and carbon trading would begin.
Senator Wong said if the world had failed to reach agreement by the end of 2011, ''the Government will set the target at 5pc to give business certainty from 2012 onwards''.
The Greens have proposed a compromise in which the price of carbon would be fixed at $20 a tonne from July 1 for two years.
Senator Wong was unenthusiastic about the concept yesterday. ''We have made our position clear,'' she said.
The Greens have also put the proposal to senators Boyce and Troeth. Senator Boyce said yesterday it was unrealistic to think business and the bureaucracy would be ready by July.
''Even if it was possible, the impact on business plans would be very severe,'' she said.
On Tuesday the Government will reintroduce the scheme that it negotiated with Malcolm Turnbull last year.
Mr Abbott has withdrawn the Coalition's support for a market-based mechanism such as an ETS or carbon tax. He has promised to unveil his own policy.
Yesterday he went further and excused the world's bigger polluters from embracing a market-based solution.
''Let's face it, why should China and India hold back the advance of their peoples in this cause?'' he said.
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