When business starts putting its hand out asking for Government welfare to help it fight climate change, you have to start worrying.

That seems to be the take in a piece of special pleading from the Business Council of Australia which represents that country's biggest and most powerful corporates. The BCA paper, Modelling Success: Designing an ETS that works, claims that the carbon-emitting companies in the cement, sugar, paper, electricity, gas and other industries will be severely disadvantaged by Australia's proposed emissions trading scheme. It also asks that the big polluting industries pay less, indeed preferably nothing, for permits to pollute. It also wants the scheme to start later than 2010 and that the already-too-modest target to cut carbon emissions by 10% by 2020 be either severely slashed or abandoned altogether until an international scheme is established. It also warns us that if these businesses don't get their way, they'll move offshore to regimes with less stringent requirements.

Yeah right, let's get real here. Do they expect us to believe that big corporations can't look after themselves? And does that mean businesses can't do anything to cut their emissions? And they can't pass the cost on to customers? And do we really expect them to move away from a country with massive supplies of cheap raw materials and skilled labor.

Still, there are signs that Australia's Rudd Government will buckle in.