Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I ask the minister a couple of questions about the Emissions Reduction Fund. Firstly, can the minister point to any modelling, conducted either internally by the department or under contract by an external organisation, around the likely abatement achieved through the Emissions Reduction Fund and its contribution to the five per cent target? In particular, does that modelling distinguish between abatement that is or is not consistent with internationally agreed methodologies? Regarding the Carbon Farming Initiative legislation that the minister introduced to the parliament today as the vehicle for this fund, obviously this essentially expands the land sector specific framework beyond the land sector to cover a whole range of other sectors that the minister would like to see covered by the Emissions Reduction Fund, including household and community energy efficiency and a range of others.

The economics of the potential abatement from these other sectors will obviously be different potentially to the economics of the land sector, yet, as I understand it, the government's intention is to asses all of the sectors on the same lowest-cost model. I am just wondering whether the minister can outline how the government intends to deal with those cost variations between those different sectors; and how an average weighted price disclosure, which is intended to provide the price signal for potential bidders, will have any validity if the contracts are highly variable.

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