Rudd: Market chaos won't slow carbon scheme  

Reuters report that PM Kevin Rudd is still showing some spine over introducing carbon trading by 2010, ignoring frenzied wailing from the fossil fuel industry - Market chaos won't slow carbon scheme: Australia PM.

Australia's plans to launch a carbon emissions trading scheme within two years will not be derailed by the global financial crisis, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Tuesday.

Australia's second-largest oil and gas producer, Woodside Petroleum Ltd, this week told Rudd's center-left Labor government that global market volatility and bank credit paralysis should put emissions trading on hold.

Rudd said the worst international financial crisis since the 1930s did not eclipse the danger of climate change, expected to have a greater impact on Australia's $1 trillion coal and energy reliant economy than almost any other developed nation.

"On emissions trading, our ambition remains 2010," Rudd told journalists while unveiling a A$10.4 billion ($7.3 billion) emergency stimulus package to protect Australia against any global recession. Part of the government's thinking is the calls from business for consistency and predictability in the future. Climate change is not going to go away," Rudd said.