Climate sanity, perhaps - Malcolm Turnbull

The Federal Government must take immediate steps to salvage Australia's economy, including dropping the 2010 starting date for the carbon emissions trading scheme, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says.

"We are proposing three actions the government can take immediately which will strengthen the Australian economy in the face of this economic crisis and add confidence to Australian householders and Australian business."

One of those steps would be to announce a delay to the start of an emissions trading scheme in Australia.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has promised the scheme would be introduced by 2010, but Mr Turnbull is urging Mr Rudd to admit this was "nothing more than an election year flourish".

"An emissions trading scheme in 2010 would mean the design of the scheme would have to be finalised before we know what the rest of the world is going to do at Copenhagen - which is the big climate change conference in December next year - and indeed before we know what the new US president will do," Mr Turnbull said.

"Industry has come back to the PM and said 2010 is too soon, it's too rushed. We have to be part of a global solution."

I suppose we can't hope for everything at once, and the Opposition still broadly agrees with the Government that man-made CO2 emissions are causing climate change and we need an ETS, but as a first step, a delay for further evaluation sounds eminently sensible to me. Read it here.