Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you Mr Chair. I just thought I would respond to a couple of the points that the Hon Nick Smith was making just now which were around the name. He has raised this before and it may not surprise people there was actually a heated debate about the name of the bill because we actually recognise that not only is it inaccurate to say zero carbon" because of course carbon is only part of the equation—it's carbon dioxide—but the issue was and ultimately we went with the name of the bill that was being promoted by the youth organisation Generation Zero. That was sort of the inspiration for the bill in many ways. We did play around with a number of other alternatives but they became unwieldy and didn't really communicate terribly effectively. So I take Dr Smith's point that it doesn't wholly or adequately describe what it is that the bill is intended to do. But I just wanted to reassure him that because it is an amendment bill it will of course be placed within the Climate Change Response Act 2002 the name of which is not currently due to change. Now I will just turn my attention to one of the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that he referred to. The Opposition have raised a number of SOPs and obviously during the course of the debate I would like to address each of them fulsomely. But I thought given I guess the level of attention that the Opposition has on the methane component of the target it would be worth just addressing that one first because I know that you're most vexed about that particular component.So this relates to SOP 405—and there are a few things. First of all you know we actually did receive from the Opposition last year when designing the bill in advance of introducing it into the House a request that the Climate Change Commission actually consider the target. And so that is actually currently written into the bill. It says in new section 5P(1) inserted by clause 8 that the commission must when setting the next emissions budgets from 2036 review the target. And so that is literally the request to kick it to the commission. So actually it is required to do that in the existing clause that's there. And that is in there at the specific request of the Opposition. Now I know that for you know a lot of people the timing of that which is early 2024—that it must report by early 2024—there is a concern that that there is too long that it essentially extends a period of uncertainty in which people don't know quite what the definitive number is going to be for 2050 particularly when it comes to biogenic methane. And so I just wanted to say something about that which is that the next part of that section which is section 5P(1)(b) also says that the commission must review the target "at any time the Minister requests a review." And so I just wanted to note that if 2024 was felt as being too late actually it can happen under the existing legislation earlier than that. The second thing that I know that the Opposition has raised real concerns about is the provisional range of 24 to 47 percent which was drawn from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1.5 degree report last year that that is the wrong range or it's too high or you know it doesn't meet with some of the science that the Opposition members have been referring to. It's worth noting that in the legislation when the commission is required to or can review the target there is no requirement in the legislation for it to stick with that range. So if the Opposition is correct—that actually the science is that it should be a different number that's outside the range that we put into the legislation then it can do so completely unfettered. And so I wanted to say all of that for the sake of saying that we've actually heard those concerns and we have actually already built them into the legislation as it stands.In terms of the specific SOP 406 that the Opposition's put in there I wanted to just say that I don't think it's appropriate to move it into regulations because it is so significant. One of the things that we are doing with this is that for the first time we're actually placing the emissions reduction target in primary legislation and so to have half the target—essentially the long-term gases target—placed in primary legislation but then the methane emissions reduction target placed in regulations is both inconsistent and we actually think it's important enough that it should go into the primary legislation. Also I wanted to say that in new section 5Q(2)(a)(ii) the commission can actually already recommend a change to the target if significant changes have occurred in the "scientific understanding of climate change:".So I'm just saying all of these things for the sake of saying that we've actually received those concerns and we feel that we've actually addressed them in the legislation and in changes that have come through as a result of the select committee process."