Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

The government has designed its energy security fund to reduce energy security risks. We are providing assistance to the most emissions intensive generators in the country wherever they may be. Assistance is targeted in this way because the modelling and expert advice indicate that this is the best way to reducing risk to energy security. I have outlined the nature of the energy security fund and I am again saying to the senator that I do not think other ministers, including from your side of government, would have gone through, in the context of a whole-of-economy-and-sector reform, what a particular company would get in relation to a program that had yet not passed the parliament. I do not think that is appropriate. I think what is sensible is to go through the policy rationale for why assistance has been structured in the way it has. I have done that, but we can do this a fair bit all day. You can move from one company to another and another. What I would say is that they would get no assistance under your package.