Page 4993 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 26 October 2010
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The other consideration is that there are real issues around offsets. I think that these issues have declined in recent years as the rules and accountability around offsets have improved but, nonetheless, there are real issues. Mr Seselja mentioned tree planting. There are issues around the permanency of the offsets that come from tree planting. These issues have been well thrashed out in many fora, but all it takes is one decent bushfire and your carbon offsets are back in the atmosphere fairly quickly.
There have certainly been issues of accounting in places such as Papua New Guinea and Indonesia around double counting of offsets and the potential logging of areas that have been counted as the carbon offset on some previous occasions. There have certainly been some notorious cases of what might best be described as dodgy offsetting practices. Those are the sorts of issues—the permanency, the accounting, let alone the costs of the offsets and whether in fact a bit more ingenuity driven here in the ACT might be better than pursuing an offset, and it is shame that we will not have this opportunity somewhere down the line for the minister to have this kind of option available to him. The fact that it is not in this legislation—as it appears is going to be the case—does not preclude a future minister from setting this, but I commend this amendment to the Assembly.
Proposed new clause 10A negatived.
Clause 11.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (10.59), by leave: I move amendments Nos 7 to 9 circulated in my name together [see schedule 2 at page 5087].
These amendments relate to the independent entity and the way that it reports to the minister. The reporting period is defined further down at the end of this part and is defined as meaning two years after the end of the financial year. The reason for these amendments is to ensure that the report is delivered in a reasonable time frame. However, the reality is that the reporting for the ACT on any one financial year is delayed due to the reporting that is required to be included from the national greenhouse gas inventory.
The Australian government have a requirement under their United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change commitments to report national accounting figures to the UNFCCC by 15 April for each financial year for the two years earlier—that is, for the 2007-08 year, the reporting is due by April 2010. The latest date that the Australian government can submit these figures without being in breach of their reporting obligations under the UNFCCC is 30 May. These amendments are a method by which we can be sure that the Australian government have completed their annual reporting and allow sufficient time for the ACT to complete their own annual reports.
This package of amendments does, however, also ensure that the Assembly and the community can have confidence about when annual reporting will be completed under the act. I note that some of the real detail, particularly amendment No 9, deals with issues around the Assembly not sitting. We picked these words up from Mr Seselja’s
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