Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

To be super clear on the timing unfolding: as I said, the reason this bill needs to be passed soon is that we want to allow the Clean Energy Regulator adequate time to hire the expertise they need—because developing methodologies is highly specialised work—and adequate time to develop those methodologies. It's also to make sure that the IT that will be required for the public register is available and up and running.

This bill, I hope, will pass through the House of Representatives this week. It will then go to the Senate, and there will be an extensive Senate inquiry. It will take some time to go through the Senate. In the coming weeks, I will also be releasing the changes that we are proposing to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, including the first of the National Environmental Standards, for public consultation. So there will be an extensive opportunity for, first of all, the Senate to further examine this bill and, secondly, for members of the House of Representatives, senators and the broader public in the not-too-distant future to look at the national environmental standard on offsets.

Of course, this chamber and the Senate will have an opportunity to move amendments and to have their view on the National Environmental Standards and on the biodiversity conservation act amendments when those come before the parliament. So I hope I'm reassuring the member for Clark that there is both a substantial process to still be gone through on the nature repair market through the Senate investigation of the bill, and there will be extensive public opportunities for the member for Clark, the member for Goldstein, all of the crossbench, environmental organisations, scientists and anybody who has an interest in the offset standard to be able to examine first and then publicly comment on what we're proposing with the offset standard.

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