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

The effect of the Greens amendments, as I understand them, is to essentially require more people to report. They reduce the reporting threshold from 25,000 to 10,000 tonnes, require ACCRA to publish facility level data and remove the right of industry to object to release of data on a commercial confidentiality ground. That last one in particular is not a particularly sensible amendment. If things are commercial in confidence, to simply remove it as grounds seems somewhat odd. When assessing how a regulation operates you obviously need to balance the social or economic benefit against the regulatory cost.

What is being proposed by the Greens adds significantly to compliance costs and, the government would suggest, without a corresponding benefit. I am advised that data from the RIS, the regulation impact statement, for the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act indicated that a reduction in the threshold as is proposed—I interpolate, from 25,000 to 10,000 tonnes—would potentially increase the number of liable entities up to threefold, whilst reducing carbon emissions by only 1.4 percentage points or less. That is a very significant increase in compliance requirements and, you would have to say, for a small increase in benefit in terms of carbon emissions. The government is also of the view that facility-level data may be commercially sensitive. We do not support the amendments proposed.