It was one of those situations where an interviewer asks a question and the answer is I'll tell you what we are not going to do..."Labor party rant"
To paraphrase, in context it went something like this:
Question:
Will companies (major emitters) be punished for exceeding the baselines emissions that have been set for them.
Answer, they may receive fines.
Question:
Will those major emitters be encouraged to reduce their emissions,
Answer, "They may be subject to best practice rules"
Question:
So that means they will be encouraged to reduce emissions?
Answer, If in the future if they build new plant they may be using new technology and they might be subject to tougher standards, beyond that we're not looking at the labor party approach of taxing activity.
Interviewer: "I don't want to talk about the Labor party, I want to know if you are going to ask companies to reduce their emissions"
Interviewer and interviewee talk over each other.
Me:
I can see where she was going there.
Hunt was imprecise about the Government financially punishing companies for exceeding their base-line emissions or for not reducing emissions in the future.
She wanted to know what the Government were doing not what they weren't going to do (not taxing activity).
BTW if you fine companies (The stick in the carrot and stick scenario), that could be considered to be a tax.
