Gillard's Government is a party to a UN agreement that Climate Change Minister Greg Combet signed in December at a under which approximately 10 per cent of carbon taxes in developed countries will go to a Green Climate Fund. While Ms Gillard has been denying she would support a carbon tax last August, her government had already committed to spend $599 million on climate change handouts over the current three-year Budget period. This will occur mainly in the Pacific and South-East Asia, $470 million of which has been allocated already (Murray 2011). Solutions and Reclamation

So, what is the middle path? Can a compromise be reached? While there was some support in the time of the former Howard government, the current situation may jeopardize this as the then administration assessed its options with regard to the situation Australian Government 2011). This was also the opinion expressed in a Bloomberg piece that "Australia's carbon-tax policy is discouraging investment in the nation's power industry, resulting in possible shortages in as little as five years, electricity supplier TRUenergy Holdings Pty said."The fear is that it will choke off available investment money (Raja 2011)."

The solution would then have to come from the investment community itself and from a promise of profit from new green technology. In this author's opinion, it is simply a matter of combining the momentum of profit from new green technologies into the mix.

This is precisely what is happening in Great Britain and we should be able to learn something from it where the benefits and profits from green industries should be able to help mitigate the losses in old industrial industries such as coal (Totaro, 2011). Ultimately, green technological industries attached to the mining industry could provide whole new engines of economic growth for Australia...

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http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/latest/8916664/carbon-tax-billions-to-help-poor-nations/. Last accessed 21 May 2011.

Raja, S. (2011). Australia's Carbon-Tax Policy May Discourage Investment, TRUenergy

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