Greens say policy belongs with Hollowmen

Updated: 12:00, Friday July 23, 2010

Labor’s climate change policy has been described as a farcical stunt straight from the script of television’s political satire The Hollowmen.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard outlined the policy on Thursday, pledging $1 billion over 10 years to make the national electricity grid more friendly to renewable energy.

Ms Gillard also promised tougher standards for new coal-fired power stations.

The prime minister also outlined plans for a citizens’ assembly of 150 people to discuss issues including an emissions trading scheme, which Labor will review in 2012.

The Australian Greens were less than impressed, saying the announcement added hot air to the global warming problem.

Climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne described the assembly as a ‘gabfest’ and ‘ideally suited to the Hollowmen’, the ABC’s hit comedy series.

‘The real community representative assembly is actually up for election right now,’ she told reporters in Canberra.

Labor will try to ‘hide behind’ the assembly’s mandate to reach community consensus, when the Greens insist on a carbon price, Senator Milne warned.

‘The prime minister is not going to be able to get away with (that).’

Senator Milne welcomed the $1 billion investment but said it wouldn’t ‘take the grid very far at all’.

Business- and climate-conscious voters would have ‘nowhere to go’ but the Greens if they wanted to see action, she said.

‘Vote Green and give us the power in the Senate to … embarrass whichever party is in government into (action) on a carbon price.’