By James Grubel CANBERRA, May 14 (Reuters) - Australia's parliament began debating controversial carbon-trade laws on Thursday with the government no closer to a deal to get its trading scheme through a hostile Senate.Junior Climate Change Minister Greg Combet presented a package of nine bills and said the carbon trading regime was one of the most significant environmental and economic reforms in the country's history. "Australia must play its part in this international action. Tackling the challenge of climate change is one of the government's highest priorities," Combet said as he introduced the laws in the lower House of Representatives. The government needs seven more votes in the upper-house Senate to pass the legislation, despite major changes designed to try to lure support from the conservative opposition parties, which hold the largest voting bloc, and from the Greens. If the laws are blocked in the Senate, the government could use the delay as an excuse to hold an early election by late 2009. The next election would normally be held in late 2010. For a related story on election speculation, double click on {ID:nSYD380895]. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on May 4 announced the government would delay carbon trading by 12 months to July 2011, in line with calls from big business and conservative lawmakers, and would price carbon at A$10 ($7.63) a tonne for the first year. The government also increased assistance to major emitters to help exporting companies already suffering the impact of the global economic downturn. SECURITY Conservative opposition parties are divided over the carbon trade laws, and have yet to announce what changes they will seek and how they will vote when the laws reach the Senate in mid-June. In a bid to appease the Greens, Rudd promised deeper emissions cuts of up to 25 percent, based on year 2000 levels, by 2020 if other rich nations backed similarly ambitious reductions as part of a broader climate pact to replace the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol. But the Greens want carbon trade to start sooner and are pushing Rudd to commit to deeper cuts in greenhouse emissions, saying Australians want action to arrest climate change. "They want action that is really going to reduce the carbon going into the atmosphere that is threatening this country's security and the planet's security for our children and our grandchildren," Greens leader Bob Brown told reporters. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the government wanted the carbon trade laws passed by parliament by the end of June to give business certainty, and ensure the laws are bedded down before global climate talks in Copenhagen in December. Australia's carbon trade scheme aims to be the world's broadest, covering 75 percent of emissions from around 1,000 of the country's largest polluters. Companies will need to buy permits for every tonne of carbon they produce, creating a market for carbon and a financial incentive for companies to curb emissions. Australia, the world's biggest coal exporter and a growing supplier of liquefied natural gas, accounts for 1.5 percent of global carbon emissions but is one of the highest per-capita polluters. Coal is used to generate 80 percent of Australia's electricity. ($1 = A$1.31) (Editing by David Fogarty)
A diver explores dead coral reefs in Gili Trawangan at Indonesia's Lombok island May 13, 2009. Southeast Asia's biologically diverse coral reefs will disappear by the end of this century, wiping ...
