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

The government does not support this amendment. What the Western Australian senators who will vote against this scheme and who have campaigned against this scheme are doing is, by legislative fiat, seeking to pick one industry out of a policy and simply say, ‘We are going to give you a different rate even if, due to your emissions intensity, you do not qualify for that rate.’ That is what they are doing.

Here we have a policy framework that gives assistance on the basis of the amount of carbon costs you face—how emissions intensive you are compared to your revenue. We have a coherent policy position, a principle that says we will assist companies on the basis of considering how much in carbon costs they will face and their capacity to pay. That is probably the best way of simply describing it. What they are saying is, ‘We want you to forget about the policy and just put an amendment in that says that, no matter how small the carbon cost and no matter how high the revenue, a particular industry is going to be favoured because we’—this particular group of senators—‘want to make a political point.’ This would increase the cost of assistance for the LNG industry by about $2.6 billion out to 2019-20. So, Senator Cormann, next time you come in here, having a go about debt and deficit, I will ask you to remind us where you were going to fund this amendment of $2.6 billion over the decade from.

We on this side of the chamber are big supporters of LNG, as has been demonstrated by the progress under this government of many activities in the LNG sector, the most important and most recent of which is the turning of the first sod today—I think—by my colleague Mr Ferguson to mark the start of the construction of the Gorgon project. Obviously the activity definition for LNG has not yet been finalised but, in relation to the question from Senator Cash, we will finalise that definition in accordance with the policy, because when you are conducting a whole-of-economy reform you do not pick bits of industries and change your policy just because you want to advantage one or other of your electorates.