Court Simon; Shaw James; Salesa JennySIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Minister. It's very helpful particularly for people who are listening at home who might be interested in what this is all about. Because the emissions trading scheme (ETS) is not something that typically gets discussed at a barbecue—unless I'm there or James is there—Hon Member: Minister.SIMON COURT: —the Minister's there. So Minister I just want to come to the forgone revenue part of it. The last two auctions that the Government has run have been passed in without selling any of the carbon credits. Minister if you can just give us an indication of how much revenue you think is being forgone and what the implications of that are? Because the revenue from those auctions then goes into the decarbonising industry fund which is one of the levers that ACT's very concerned about—actually we don't think it should be going into that fund; we think the ETS revenue should be going back to consumers in the form of a carbon tax credit so that consumers can make their own decision about how they decarbonise.But Minister could you just give us an indication of how much revenue might have been forgone through those auctions failing to trigger and sell?Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): Well the honest answer to that question is: you can't tell until you've had the second two auctions—the remaining auctions this year—because units are allocated on an annual basis and any units that weren't auctioned at the first two become available at the third and fourth which are yet to happen. But having said that that's irrelevant to the scope of this bill.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call on Simon Court. Try to keep it relevant to this particular bill.SIMON COURT (ACT): Quite. So I mean I disagree that it's irrelevant because the problem that this bill tries to solve is an excess of allocations of units. Minister you've described that allocations from the Government's cache that are allocated to industry mean the Government has less to auction. So Minister—and Madam Chair—I do believe this is quite material. We need to understand what the implications are of excessive free allocations or potentially lower allocations meaning the Government's got more credits to auction.It doesn't change the fact though Minister does it that the Government—or the Minister in fact—are using powers akin to a deity and has the ability to set a cap on carbon emissions? So if that's the case and we've got this giving an allocation for free versus revenues that the Government could potentially raise there is an inherent tension there.Minister I'd just like you to explain: is there any thinking going on which is influencing decision making about how many credits are made available for free and the downside risk to the Crown's revenues through the emissions trading scheme; and would the risk of giving away free credits—and potentially the Crown missing out on the revenue for say pet Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry projects—have any bearing on decision making or the development of formulas or measures in this bill?Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): No. That would be outside the scope of this bill.