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

Thanks for the question, Senator Hanson-Young. I've been really clear in this debate that this bill proceeds as a consequence of a number of things—firstly, amendments to the London protocol and, secondly, the government's desire to strengthen more generally the arrangements around carbon capture and storage. The reason that that matters is that the safeguard mechanism imposes obligations on large projects that have large emissions, and it requires them to meet binding limits on the amount of emissions that may come from their projects. They can do that by technical interventions to reduce the emissions from the projects they're involved in or through purchasing offsets. You understand that; you were here for the safeguard mechanism debate.

Australia has benefited over many years from inward-bound investment from a number of countries. Japan is one of those countries, and so is Korea. I'm not going to put words into the mouth of Senator Wong—she is a senator in this chamber—but I think it is self-evident that it is in our national interest, from an economic perspective, and also in the interests of our relations with other nations that are our energy trading partners that arrangements that are put in place for regulating CCS are certain and knowable. That's been the proposition I've put before this chamber since this debate began.