Penny Wong as the special guest on Insiders this morning said it showed that they were serious in wanting to get the CPRS passed, that they either had to negotiate with the Greens and the minor senators. Their judgement was that negotiating with the Coalition was their best chance. Given the attitude of Senator Fielding this is probably true.

But as Fran Kelly pointed out on Insiders, farming was only one hurdle; there will be others. And granting this concession will leave the Nationals unmoved. Apart from their climate change denialism, they see the CPRS as a gigantic tax and an unnecessary impost on Australian industry and commerce.

The decision, if implemented, would bring us into line with our major competitors, such as the US, but in truth the treatment of farming is still a contested issue there.

The decision would still leave farmers exposed to cost increases on inputs, such as fuel and fertilizers. Also the details on how the granting of credits or offsets for farmers would be implemented is still unclear. Penny Wong made it clear that more work needed to be done on the science of this aspect, and more discussion was needed with stakeholders.

It’s interesting that one peak farming group, the American National Farmers Union (NFU), see the need for long-term mitigation of global warming. President Roger Johnson

urged committee members to take into account the costs of inaction. “Models of climate change scenarios demonstrate increased frequency of heat stress, droughts and flooding events that will reduce crop yields and livestock productivity,” Johnson said. “Estimates provide that for every one degree increase in temperature, Celsius, we will see up to a ten percent reduction in agriculture production worldwide.”

There is a similar attitude in the Australian NFF, whose site told us as far back as February 2007 that Climate change threat must be tackled ‘head on’. February 2007 was after the publication of the Stern Review and at the beginning of the release of the IPCC AR4 documentation which went on throughout 2007. It does follow the release in June 2006 of a study for the NFF by the Allen Consulting Group, ‘Emissions Trading and the Land’. That was in retrospect quite a foreward-looking and strategic move on the part of the NFF.

For Malcolm Turnbull not much has changed. As one leading commentator said recently there is a battle going on for the soul of the Liberal Party. Those on the right are telling him that he can be leader if he likes, but it is their party.