National rejects Labour offer to co-operate on climate change

National is spurning an offer from Labour to work co-operatively on setting up an emissions trading scheme, Labour's climate change spokesman Charles Chauvel said today.

Mr Chauvel said he had written to his ministerial counterpart Nick Smith on March 30 and there still had been "no substantive response" yet.

Dr Smith suggested in Parliament yesterday Labour was not co-operating on the ETS legislation currently being reviewed by the Government, Mr Chauvel said.

He said this was not true and the offer to co-operate had been a genuine one "designed to rescue National from becoming captive to ACT extremism" on the policy.

National should proceed to an ETS and not use delays of a similar scheme in Australia as an excuse.