Releasing WA’s submission to the Green Paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), Treasurer Troy Buswell said the State supported national action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, however the plan as it stood had serious implications for the economic wellbeing of growth states like Western Australia.

He said it would be premature to introduce the CPRS in its current form as soon as 2010.

It risked driving some of our major industries overseas and causing future investment interest to dry up, with untold implications for jobs and families.

Rather than reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the outcome from imposing a half-baked scheme in Australia could in fact be a rise in overall global emissions should industries move away to locations with fewer environmental rules and lower costs.

The WA submission said the CPRS relied on very little accurate emissions data and the economic modelling on which all parties would rely had been delayed.

"We do need to see the compensation to disadvantaged firms better targeted and made fairer," Mr Buswell said.

"We are also concerned that the proposed approach for defining emissions-intensive activities will be extremely difficult to apply to many of WA’s crucial export industries."

The WA submission urged the Commonwealth to consider the ramifications for the liquid natural gas industry, which it warned may decide to shelve new projects in favour of overseas options.

This could slow development of the local LNG sector and significantly reduce supply growth in domestic gas.

Arrangements for the agricultural sector were also incomplete.

The Treasurer said it was extremely important that revenues from the scheme were directed in full to compensate the affected parties identified, and WA supported the proposition that households should receive the bulk of it.

However, the formulation of a compensation system was still some way off.