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

I will take on notice, if I may, how many auditors there are who are identified under the NGERS. I am not sure we would track that data. The NGERS—the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme—of course, was Mr Turnbull’s legislation when environment minister, and it is a very useful piece of legislation in terms of providing the reporting base for some of the work we are doing now. I will check that. As I said, I am not sure that the government would, in fact, be the registrar for all such expertise.

I am not sure what the policy proposition or question is. The point that Senator Milne seems to be making is that nothing is going to happen. That is not what this says. What this says is that we want to explore how we can bring more sources of abatement either into the scheme or through the voluntary market. Some of this work will be difficult, but we believe it is important and we have been very clear in this agreement about the specified areas in which we think work needs to be focused. We think that the NFF are correct when they say that farmers want to be part of the climate change solution, and we want to provide those opportunities.