Australia's climate bill row heats up

The simmering tensions between Australia's government and the opposition over the country's proposed climate change bill threatened to boil over today, with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd accusing opposition climate sceptics of adopting a Medieval mentality.

"It is as if we are back into the trial of Galileo or something and they are simply arguing somehow that the science is fiction and that they alone, in their own prejudiced universe, occupy fact," Rudd told parliament, as his Labor government continued to struggle to secure the opposition votes it requires to pass its proposed cap-and-trade legislation.

His comments were echoed by Assistant Climate Change Minister Greg Combet who pointed to the heat wave and 40C plus temperatures that have affected large areas of the country in recent weeks as further evidence of global warming.

"November this year has seen a long and intense heat wave across much of southern and eastern Australia," he said. "The trend is absolutely clear, the climate is warming."

However, the debate is unlikely to convince up to 30 opposition MPs who have pledged to oppose the bill when it faces its second vote next week.

An initial version of the bill was defeated in the summer after an unlikely coalition of green and opposition MPs voted against it. The government has subsequently agreed to a series of concessions, most recently announcing that the agricultural sector would be permanently exempted from the cap-and-trade scheme.

However, it is still short of the seven opposition votes it will require next week, with leaders of the opposition Liberal Party signalling that they wish to see further concessions to protect the coal industry from the cost of complying with the legislation.

Opposition leaders said negotiations were ongoing and that they expected the legislation to pass next week, but only if further concessions are delivered. But tempers are evidently fraying on both sides of the debate, and the possibility remains that with the government leading in the polls it could prompt a second defeat for the legislation, which would trigger an early election.