Farmers hope government backs down on ETS

Protesters during the anti ETS protest at Parliament yesterday. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Act's John Boscawen accepts the July 1 expansion of the emissions trading scheme is now a fait accompli.

The MP has spent weeks campaigning up and down the country against the extension of the ETS to fuel which will increase petrol and power prices.

He was speaking just before a protest march of 80 to 90 people arrived at Parliament yesterday. The demonstration was organised by Federated Farmers and Act - the only political party totally opposed to the scheme.

Mr Boscawen said the best opponents of the ETS could hope for was that the scheme was not further extended and the two-for-one obligation remained.

That obligation is designed to ease the introduction of stationary energy, industrial processes and liquid fossil fuel sectors into the ETS by requiring they surrender one compliant unit for every two tonnes of CO2 emitted.

Federated Farmers president Don Nicholson still hoped the Government would back down at the eleventh hour.

Mr Nicholson believed the public had not been sufficiently informed of the indirect costs of the scheme.

As an example, he said the Southland Hospital Board was expected to see its coal bill rise 18 per cent in the first year of the scheme."The direct costs might be obvious in the first month, but the flow through is not, and that is where the deception in this whole thing is."

Federated Farmers would be lobbying Prime Minister John Key on Friday at a meeting in Invercargill.