Australian Industry Greenhouse Network

The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network (AIGN) is an organisation that lobbies Australian State and Federal Governments about climate change issues on behalf of some sectors of Australian Industry. According to a Four Corners report with the same name, and author and whistleblower Dr Guy Pearse, a group of core members of the AIGN describe themselves as the Greenhouse Mafia and have been highly successful at lobbying the Australian Government. On the same Four Corners report Robyn Bain, an Executive Director of the AIGN, denied that she had ever heard the term "Greenhouse Mafia".

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Emissions Trading

In a speech[1] on Emissions Trading in 2006, John Daley, the chief executive of the AIGN, stated on the subject of a carbon price signal:

And I put it that way deliberately, because I think it helps to highlight a key question, and that is “when” would it be sensible to impose those costs? To my mind, now is not the time.

The AIGN has made submissions to both the state based National Emissions Trading Taskforce and the federal Prime Ministerial Task Group on Emissions Trading. Recommendations from these submissions have included that:

• Some greenhouse gas emission permits should be allocated for free to compensate for the loss in asset values that many firms will instantly suffer from the introduction of the scheme. These allocations would be for the remaining life of the asset that was expected before the trading scheme was implemented and the holder would be free to sell these permits even if the asset were closed down before that time;
• Some permits should be allocated for free for new investment for as long as is needed by trade exposed, energy/emissions intensive industry to retain its competitive position where there is no universal global scheme;
• Free allocation linked to past emissions (known as grandfathering), or in the case of a baseline-and-credit scheme, the allocation of benchmarks;
• Property rights – the value of permits (and offset credits) issued by the Government need to be fully underwritten by the ‘just terms’ compensation provisions of the Constitution.
• Existing mandatory Federal and State schemes that overlap with and duplicate the national emissions trading scheme should be abolished or phased out. The property rights that would be extinguished where existing schemes are no longer of value should be fully compensated.

Membership

Industry Association Members:

• Australian Aluminium Council (Ron Knapp)
• Australasian (Iron and Steel) Slag Association (Craig Heidrich)
• Australian Coal Association (Mark O'Neil)
• Australian Institute of Petroleum (Dr John Tilley)
• Minerals Council of Australia (Peter Morris)
• National Generator's Forum (John Boshier)
• Plastics and Chemicals Industries Association (Peter Gniel)
• Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (Belinda Robinson)
• Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council (Miles Prosser)
• Cement Industry Federation (Robyn Bain)
• Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (Andrew McKellar)

Individual Business Members:

• Chevron Australia Pty Ltd (Brad Haynes)
• Woodside Petroleum Limited (Elena Mavrofridis)
• Xstrata Coal Australia Pty Ltd (Colin Whyte)
• CSR Limited (Martin Jones)
• ExxonMobil (Geoff Davis)
• Hydro Aluminium Kurri Kurri (Paul Wenta)
• Santos Limited (Susie Smith)
• Tomago Aluminum Company Pty Ltd (Warren Brooks)
• Wesfarmers Limited (Keith Kessell)
• BHP Billiton (Holly Lindsay)
• Shell Australia Limited (Eleanor Carswell)
• BP Australia (Mark Proegler)
• Rio Tinto Australia Limited (Neil Marshman)
• Caltex Australia (Frank Topham)
• Mitsui and Co. (Australia) Limited (Katsumasa Irie)
• Origin Energy Limited (Julian Turecek)
• Alcoa of Australia Limited

See also

• Greenhouse Mafia