The Australian Greens have today flagged significant concerns with the Rudd Government's emissions trading plans in a minority report to the Economics Committee's review of the draft legislation.

"The Government will have to make serious changes to the legislation if it actually wants it to pass" said Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne.

"the Government will either have to satisfy the Coalition by handing over even more corporate welfare to polluters, making the scheme even less effective, or it will have to work with the Greens to make this a real effort to deal with climate change.

"The CPRS as currently proposed is not designed to drive the transition to a zero carbon economy, but rather is intended to maintain the profitability of existing polluting industries.

"As it stands, the legislation would actively prevent the kind of emissions reductions Australia needs to achieve in order to play an equitable role in the global effort to prevent climate catastrophe."

The Greens flagged five significant concerns in the minority report:
1. The 2020 emission targets of 5-15 per cent below 2000 levels are much too weak to fairly contribute to the global task of preventing dangerous climate change - the only reason to adopt an emissions trading scheme in the first place.
2. The high level of compensation to the emission intensive trade exposed industries and coal-fired generators, which is largely based on maintaining their profitability, is unjustified and counter-productive.
3. Given the obvious inadequacies of both the emission targets and the industry compensation regime, and the urgency of the climate challenge, the length of time before these errors can be corrected is too long.
4. The weakness of the target, the compensation to industry and the widely-perceived problem of lack of additionality for voluntary action would dramatically undermine public support and action for emissions reduction efforts.
5. The absence of any restriction on the extent to which emission reduction obligations can be met through the purchase of foreign permits diminishes the incentive to restructure domestically.

"Just as the world is running out of time to prevent climate catastrophe, the Government is running out of time to secure the passage of this legislation and it is looking increasingly like they have no intention of doing so.

"Climate change is far too serious to play political games. Either the Government will take it seriously or it will not - at this stage it looks like it will not."