Isra-Mart srl : Coal industry demands carbon tax rethink

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Isra -Mart srl news:

THE coal industry wants the Gillard government to go back to the drawing board on the proposed carbon tax.

It wants the Gillard government to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan to ensure mines aren't closed as a result of the proposed carbon tax.

Australian Coal Association chief executive Ralph Hillman and other industry leaders met with Climate Change Minister Greg Combet yesterday.

He said the coal industry didn't ask the minister for more compensation.

"It really asked him to go back to the drawing board," Mr Hillman told ABC Radio.

"This (carbon price) is going to impose an $18 billion cost on the coal industry over the next 10 years.

"This is a cost our competitors in other countries like South Africa, Indonesia, Colombia and Mongolia won't have to wear."

Mr Hillman said coal mining should be classified as an emissions intensive, trade-exposed industry, meaning it would be eligible to receive up to 95 per cent of its pollution permits for free.

If that isn't possible he wants fugitive emissions released during the mining process excluded from the carbon price regime for 10 years while new clean technologies are developed.

"If you're objective here in taxing coal mines is to cut fugitive emissions in order to meet your minus five per cent target the only way you're going to do that is by closing mines," he said.

Mr Hillman insists if the coal industry isn't given special treatment there will be a decline in investment and job losses.

But there'd be no reduction in global emissions "because the coal will be mined in those other countries and the emissions will go up just the same".

The coal association chief said he understood the $1.5 billion compensation package offered to the industry under Kevin Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme was "the starting point in the government's position" for the carbon tax.