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

I will give you the answer I believe is correct, Senator, and I will correct it after the dinner break if it is not. My recollection of the EU scheme is that the EITE allocation was not on the basis of output. So that differs from the Australian scheme. In other words, we link our assistance to how much you emit, because it is about transitional assistance. Everybody does their bit and everybody faces the carbon price, but how much of it you face is adjusted, given the need to support employment and various industries through the transition. In Europe, I understand that assistance was not allocated by reference to output.

I would also make the point that it is a bit hard to answer because I think we are probably comparing apples and oranges. The European scheme has a much narrower coverage than the Australian scheme and there were also more significant regulatory mechanisms put in place in relation to the uncovered sectors. For example, Europe has more stringent fuel efficiency measures. So there are a range of other mechanisms which were utilised instead of the market mechanism, which was much narrower than the scheme before the parliament.