With 80% of Australian printers accounted for by small businesses, the industry association says the agreement by both sides of parliament on a bill which excludes the sector from its ETS compensation package “will have a significant impact on the profitability” of the printing industry.

“The medium to large manufacturing firms are now likely to receive compensation to help offset rising energy costs and this is something that we support,” said Printing Industries chief executive Philip Andersen (pictured). “We are however extremely disappointed and concerned that the small business sector has been excluded from the compensation measures.”

Andersen said that the right balance had to be found with regards to addressing climate change, to ensure that business and industry viability were not placed at risk.

“As an association we have been proactive in the environmental area for decades and earlier this year we launched our Sustainable Green Print initiative.”

“But there seems little logic with governments at all levels encouraging businesses to adopt environmental sustainability practices, to then penalise them out of existence through higher costs.”

Andersen cited a recently-conducted survey of the association’s members which found that there was more support for carbon taxes (20.9 per cent) than the proposed ETS (18.6 per cent).

Andersen added he was concerned that 28.6 per cent of respondents indicated that their response to the proposed ETS would be to downsize their operations.

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