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

I have answered the question. It is just being asked in a different way. If the senator wants to have a discussion about delay, he and I have traversed that in this chamber many times. We believe that it is important to get this legislation through. This country has been talking about action on climate change for some 10 years. It has been 10 years since his government, the former Howard government, received its first report on the benefits of emissions trading. It has been over two years since then Prime Minister John Howard received advice from Dr Peter Shergold as Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet saying that emissions trading was the way to go and that Australia should not wait for the rest of the world. The advice was, ‘Go soon.’ We have had the International Energy Agency say that the longer we wait, the higher the costs. They have estimated that, just for the energy sector transformation that the world is required to engage in, the cost of each year of delay is around about $500 billion a year.

The senator talks about when the scheme comes in. He knows that equally important is the signal to investors. The Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group, Origin Energy and others have called for this legislation to be passed because we do need that signal to investors. We know that business certainty is a key issue in ensuring we can transform our economy. I think I have answered the senator’s question. He may not like the answer but it has been addressed.

Going to your issue, Senator Milne, I do not have any advice. I think your question was about the amount of land under licence able to be harvested. The officials in the chamber do not have that. Whilst we could take it on notice, my advice is that the Commonwealth would be unlikely to keep it because, as you would know, timber harvesting—and I appreciate your party’s position on this—for better or for worse is in large part regulated by state governments. It may be that you could reference the RFAs but I am doubtful that the Commonwealth would keep a comprehensive register of active licenses or authorisations to clear and I do not have officials here—or certainly not in this department—who would be able to give you advice about that.

I think the best way of understanding how we would approach the avoided deforestation issues is to come back to the primary principles of integrity. The conditions which would need to be met are measurable and verifiable or capable of being verified, additional and permanent. Obviously these are also matters which would need to be worked through by the offsets committee but some of the work that is being done internationally currently may be of assistance to us domestically in considering these matters.