Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This is my final line of questioning. Something like 17 Hunter Valley coalmines are scheduled to close in the next decade, but it's anticipated that the vast majority of them will seek extensions of time but possibly at lower rates of production. Most extensions are controlled actions under the EPBC Act when it's an expansion, but my question pertains to extensions in time. Given that they're extensions in time rather than in scope, and given that they're likely to have lower scope 1 emissions than the 100,000 trigger—even though emissions from the whole project will still be over the trigger—I want to know how those coalmine time extensions will be treated by the pollution trigger under the safeguard mechanism.