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

I spoke yesterday at some length about the arrangements proposed, and they are these: the amendments before this chamber simply propose an information-sharing arrangement and regularise what already occurs between departments. However, to be clear and to repeat what I said earlier in the debate, should the minister for environment make a decision which would result in the increase of scope 1 emissions from a covered facility, the minister for environment would have an obligation to communicate such a decision and the information in that person's possession about the emissions associated with the decision. They would need to communicate that with the secretary, the department of climate change, the Climate Change Authority and also the minister for climate change.

Should the minister receive advice from either the Climate Change Authority or the secretary of the department indicating that the decision taken by the minister for environment presented a risk to the objectives of the NGER Act, the minister would then contemplate whether or not the safeguard rules needed to be amended or any other step that might be required. They would be required to undertake a consultation on that question, and in the ordinary course of events we would expect that such a consultation would involve industry. That is how we've approached this series of rule changes; that is how we would approach any future rule changes, and an amendment would then take place in the ordinary way. It would be, as was the case under your mechanism, a disallowable instrument and, again, this chamber would have an opportunity to consider such an instrument.