Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move Australian Democrats amendment (5) on sheet 5180:

(5)    Schedule 1, page 3 (after line 21), after item 2, insert:

2A  Subsection 10(1)

Omit “used by the entities that are members of the group is more than 0.5 petajoules”, substitute “related greenhouse gas emissions is greater than one thousand (1,000) tonnes of CO₂ equivalent or five thousand (5,000) gigajoules, which ever is the lesser”.

This amendment changes the threshold above which companies would need to be involved in this measure. It would omit members of the group at 0.5 petajoules and substitute those that have related greenhouse gas emissions greater than 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent or 5,000 gigajoules, whichever is the lesser.

The effect of that would be to bring around 5,000 high energy using companies into the scheme. We have had a look at what those companies might be and have found that they are companies that have around 200 employees. So we are talking here about still quite large companies in this country—certainly large enough to have an audit done and for energy efficiency measures to be put in place. We say that 250 companies, which is the current reach of the act, is just too few and that, by reducing the threshold, there would be far more involvement and you would still be dealing with the biggest companies and those companies that could afford, both in an administrative sense and in an investment sense, to do this.

Question negatived.