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

Senator, this is obviously quite a technical area and I am happy to provide an answer now and also happy, if you are interested, to arrange a briefing for you on this issue. I can give you my understanding based on the advice I have been given. The difficulty is the very high spike in a short time period—days or months, for example, but within one accounting year. How do you deal with the very high spike that a catastrophic bushfire would impose, given that it may be a very high percentage of your inventory if you were to include it? As I understand it from the officials, what is being suggested—and one of the things under discussion is the threshold—is to recognise a threshold above which you would not account for the emissions, but, because you want to preserve the integrity of the accounting of the effect on the atmosphere, you also would not be able to include in the accounting the subsequent sequestration as the forest regrows for a period of time.

So the intent is not an accounting trick. The intent is to deal with a particular accounting issue which has, I think, operated as a disincentive for a number of countries to include land management activities within their inventory, but to do so in a way that reflects the net effect on the atmosphere. That is how I have understood it. I asked the official just now what the threshold would be and I understand that is a matter under discussion.