Australia politics live: hard cap on emissions in Greens-Labor safeguard deal is ‘a big

Adam Bandt continues:

Under the original design of the safeguard mechanism, pollution from coal and gas was going to go up.

For those who are interested in the numbers, the pollution from the entities covered by the safeguard mechanism was, is about 140 megatonnes now.

Under the projections, under Labor’s scheme, it was going to go up between 155 and 184 megatonnes.

That’s how much Labor wanted to expand coal and gas in their original safeguard design.

Any good climate policy should be stopping that, but Labor wanted to expand it. So as you know, the Greens have been pushing hard on new coal and gas because coal and gas are the main causes of the climate crisis and as the UN secretary general has said if we’re to get the climate crisis under control, we have to stop opening coal and gas mines.

The Greens, through the negotiations, have secured a big hit on coal and gas. There will now be, in legislation, a hard cap on actual emissions that the safeguard sector can emit.

This puts a limit on coal and gas expansion in this country. In…