Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has described climate change as "the great moral challenge of our generation", said plans for a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) were on hold after they failed to pass through parliament.

"The opposition decided to backflip on its historical commitment to bring in a CPRS and there has been slow progress in the realisation of global action on climate change," Rudd told reporters in Sydney.

"These two factors together inevitably mean that the implementation of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in Australia will be delayed."

The carbon trading legislation was rejected for the second time in December when it failed to pass through the Senate, the upper house of Australia's parliament, where several independent members hold the balance of power.

Rudd, who is expected to call an election this year, said Australia would still meet its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming, by at least five percent of 2000 levels by 2020.

"Climate change remains a fundamental economic and environmental and moral challenge for all Australians, and for all peoples of the world. That just doesn't go away," he said.

But the government's plans to introduce an emissions tradings scheme, which would have been phased in from July 2011, were thwarted when the conservative opposition reneged on its agreement to back the deal, he said.

Rudd said he still believed an emissions trading scheme was the most effective and least expensive way of acting on climate change, but he would wait until the end of the Kyoto Protocol commitment period in late 2012.

The Greens slammed the delay, saying the government lacked political will.

"Climate change is real. It is stalking Australia. It is threatening the Great Barrier Reef," Greens Senator Bob Brown said.

The conservative opposition, which has described the carbon trading scheme as "a great big new tax on everything", said it was sceptical of the government's new position.

"It is a pea and thimble game because what is absolutely clear is that last year's greatest moral challenge has become this year's inconvenience," climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said.

Rudd, a pro-green prime minister who played a prominent role at the Copenhagen UN summit on climate last year, presides over a country which remains the world's worst per capita polluter.

earlier related report
Australia's emissions trading postponed
Canberra, Australia (UPI) Apr 27, 2010 -Australia's emission trading scheme has been put on hold until 2013 or later, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced Tuesday.

Rudd blamed the opposition's decision not to support the measure and the lack of real progress internationally on climate change.

Rudd's plan, aimed at cutting Australia's emissions by 5 percent of 2000 levels by 2020, would have taxed high emission-producing companies and offset the charges with free emissions permits and financial compensation.

The prime minister's announcement comes less than a week after a report released by Melbourne think tank the Grattan Institute -- "Restructuring the Australian Economy to Emit Less Carbon" -- concluded that $22 billion in "free" permits, to be issued to heavy polluters under the proposed legislation over the next decade, are a waste of taxpayers' money.

The Australian Senate first rejected the ETS legislation last August then again in December just before the U.N. Copenhagen climate change meeting where Rudd had hoped to assume a lead role as one of the few developed nations to have such a law in place.

Now the legislation is timed to the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions, which expires at the end of 2012.

"That will provide the Australian government at the time with a better position to assess the level of global action on climate change," Rudd said.

Rudd had previously spoken of the ETS as the answer to the "great moral and economic challenge of our time," referring to climate change.

He stressed Tuesday that Canberra's targets on greenhouse gas emission reductions would prevail and that climate change continues to be a key global issue.

While the opposition supports the government's emissions reduction target and renewable energy targets, it opposes any emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax. Instead, it proposes cutting emissions through a range of measures, such as storing carbon dioxide in soil and planting 20 million trees by 2020.

Australia, the world's largest exporter of coal, has the highest per capita of carbon emissions among developed nations, with an average output of 20.5 tons of carbon dioxide per person each year.

John Connor, chief executive officer of The Climate Institute, said news of the shelving of the ETS legislation was "extremely disturbing."

"It's a bad day," he said in a statement, not only for Australians, but also "for the global community looking to Australia to be helpful in rebuilding trust and momentum in climate action."

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