Senate Economics Legislation Committee, , 5:26:06 to 5:30:14
Examination of climate-related financial disclosures and sustainability reporting as part of the government's regulatory reform package.
Topics: Climate change, Emissions reduction
Speakers: Senator Kerrynne Liddle, Michael Quinlivan, Hon Katy Gallagher, James Kelly, Unknown Speaker
That's the comp that's the complaints I've been getting. So let's as I said, if you really want it, I'm happy to provide the names and if you have a conversation with those people, that's fine. I can commit that outside of this. Um so if you could give me um in terms of that 780 million in claimed annual red tape cuts, how many of those are climate-related financial disclosures and sustainability reporting?
So excuse me, Senator, could you could you repeat that again?
So, how much of the 780 million in claimed annual red tape cuts relate to relief from cloud climate related financial disclosures and sustainability
Um so the the first measure in the package goes to increasing the threshold at which uh companies have to disclose um lodge um uh audited financial statements and will have an impact on companies who may have been brought into the climate-related disclosure scheme from one July next year. Um and the second measure went to improving the efficiency of the regime more generally, and that um can you can you give us an exact
number or do you have to provide that on notice? That for the for the first package for the relate to the climate and financial disclosures related to sustainability reporting.
So for the large company measure, um that was 215 million, which was um in the media release that was put out with the regulations when they were released last week. Right. Uh and for the second measure in the package, that's about 400 million.
So Treasury's August 2026 consultation paper says mandatory climate-related financial disclosures commenced on the 1st of January 2025. The regime was legislated by this government in the Treasury Laws Amendment Financial Market Infrastructure and Other Measures Act 2024, just a couple of years ago. It includes the scope three reporting requirements which can require data requests to smaller businesses like farms and other suppliers to larger businesses. Is that correct?
Um Senator might come in there. So that list of 14, most of them belong in markets group, and we can talk about the list in general, but for that particular item, climate-related financial disclosure, that's a responsibility of fiscal group, which is the group that will be following us. So if you have detailed questions on that, I suggest you ask them.
I thought we were in market group chair.
So we are markets group, we deal with most of these measures. But that particular one is dealt with by fiscal group.
By the fiscal group, yeah. So come back to the floor.
And that's the group that follows this group.
So maybe it's right. The government wrote the laws that imposed the red tape on businesses. They then considered changes that could reduce some of that burden they imposed and tell Australians they that means they're cutting regulatory burdens. Is that correct?
No, I don't know what what your um if you're specifically talking about a piece of legislation there, if that's the one that's been referred to uh fiscal group or just in general. Because a lot of the regulatory reform isn't just uh legislation that we have passed, but it's going back over the statute book over time. So I'm just it's not clear to me where you say we did it and now we're undoing it. That's that isn't uh like in EPBC, for example, the legislation that we reformed was about reducing red tape, but that legislation had been in place for some time.
So things like reasonable assurance audits, are they implemented yet or not?
Senator, I'd refer you to fiscal group to ask those questions.
Is that about the climate?
It's in order to 14 in the financial sectors.