Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

That is a pretty grubby question. Senator Milne, I am sure, would have had or may have used the opportunity of Senate estimates or elsewhere to pursue issues of any grants or the like. I am not aware of the grant in question and it is not germane or relevant to the legislation before the chamber.

What I would simply note is that the legislation before the chamber has clear safeguards in place. More than that, it also has proper processes in place for the Clean Energy Regulator to be able to enforce those safeguards, to be able to audit what occurs such that any company that is using native forest wood waste as part of their energy generation activities will have to be able to demonstrate the proper audit trail of where that wood waste has come from and the proper audit trail of the other purposes of use for that native forest wood, and in doing so demonstrate that the higher value purpose test has been met.