Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I want to respond a little more to the content of Senator Milne’s amendment. We have sought as a government to set the thresholds under the scheme at a level which will capture a significant proportion of Australia’s emissions, at the same time being very cognisant of the need to be wary of imposing significant compliance costs. The threshold has been set so as to capture a significant proportion of Australia’s emissions but avoid significant compliance costs, particularly for small business.

Under the act, as Senator Milne is probably aware—she does take an interest in these issues—reporting thresholds will be phased down over three years. This provides companies not currently reporting with time to prepare for greater reporting obligations. I could go through those, but I think the senator is aware of them. At the facility level, corporations are required to report when their facilities emit more than 25,000 tonnes or use more than 100 terajoules of energy. By design, this corporate level threshold is intended to exclude companies with relatively low emissions and/or relatively low energy use. The lower facility level threshold is intended to capture large facilities operated by companies that do not trigger the overall corporate level threshold.

The government did, as part of the regulatory impact statement, analyse a range of different threshold models based on data coverage and cost to business, and the threshold model adopted in the act has been set at a level which captures around 70 per cent of Australia’s emissions and energy data. This provides a sound basis for greenhouse and energy policy while avoiding excessive compliance costs, particularly on small businesses.

We do not support the amendment moved by Senator Milne. For example, reducing the facility reporting threshold to 10 kilotonnes would significantly increase compliance costs. The number of reporting entities would increase some three times, from 600 to around 1,800, whilst the coverage of greenhouse gas emissions would increase by less than 10 per cent. We consider that the current facility reporting threshold of 25 kilotonnes also minimises ongoing compliance costs as it aligns with the proposed threshold for assessing facilities under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Question negatived.

Bill agreed to.

Bill reported without amendment; report adopted.