Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

As I have indicated, the changes announced by Minister Bowen just a couple of days ago were in response to representations particularly from the manufacturing sector. Those changes involve a number of things, the most significant of which, perhaps, is a change to the test that applies to establish whether they are requiring some kind of concession in the targets that are applied to them.

It is an example of the consultation process and working through the issues. We are very determined to truly understand the businesses that are covered within the safeguard mechanism. One feature of this mechanism is that it does cover hard-to-abate sectors and it needs to be designed in such a way as to provide incentives for those sectors to start the transformation that's critical for their long-term competitiveness, but also in recognition of the technologies that are available to them at this point in time.