Govt must explain rubbery figures

There should be an independent review of the national greenhouse accounts in light of a new report that shows discrepancies relating to land clearing.

The report finds significant discrepancies between the estimates produced by the federal government's National Carbon Accounting System and the Queensland government's State-wide Landcover and Trees Study.

Since Australia relies so heavily on reduced land clearing emissions to achieve its Kyoto target, the community must be confident of the accuracy of these emission estimates.

It will be a major global humiliation for the government if it has to admit to the international community that not only are its emissions in transport and electricity skyrocketing but the offset it claimed from reduced land clearance does not exist.

As the report states, without the decline in land clearing, total emissions would have increased by over 20 per cent between 1990 and 2004, well above Australia's Kyoto target of an 8 per cent increase between 1990 and 2012.

We should be worried that the Queensland government's estimates of land clearing since 1990 are significantly different from the federal government's estimates. Even the trends are different; clearly there needs to be a full and frank explanation of the discrepancies.

There must be an independent review of the figures and the method by which the government calculates Australia's greenhouse gas emissions so that there is real transparency.

The National Greenhouse Accounts and Land Clearing: Do the numbers stack up? by Australia Institute deputy director Andrew Macintosh was released today and can be found here.