Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak this morning on the Road Vehicle Standards Bill 2018 and related bills. I'm a bit disappointed, having come in specially to listen to the member for Grayndler, because I thought that this bill was a wonderful opportunity for those in the Labor Party to set out how they were going to get a 45 per cent reduction in the CO2 equivalent emissions from the transport sector—because that is their policy. They say the targets that we have, from Paris, of reducing CO2 emissions by 26 to 28 per cent from 2005, are not enough. The Labor Party's policy is to up those—to target a 45 per cent reduction. If they are going to have that policy, they need to come into this chamber and set out, in chapter and verse, not only what they plan for the electricity sector—and we know the plan is to copy the failed experiment of South Australia—but also exactly what their plans are to reduce the CO2 emissions in the transport sector by 45 per cent. How are they going do that? Are they going to put a new tax on petrol? Are they going to ban a whole lot of types of motor vehicles from being imported into this country? Are they going to try and take cars off people? Are they going to increase road tolls? Those in the Labor Party need to explain to the Australian public how they are going to achieve a 45 per cent reduction in the transport sector.

So often the debate about reduction in emissions of CO2 is around the electricity sector. We talk about a renewable energy target, but it is effectively a renewable electricity target. The electricity sector makes up only about a third of our CO2 emissions; our transport sector makes up about 15 per cent. So, yes, the transport sector is not as big as the electricity sector; it's about half. But there has been no debate whatsoever in this House, when it comes to the road vehicle standards which this bill relates to, on what the Labor Party are going to do to make those emissions reductions. Here we had a perfect opportunity, and yet we had nothing at all from the shadow minister. I would hope that, before the next election is called, the members of the Labor Party will set out in exact detail what their plans are for the transport sector and for motor vehicles, and how they plan to get that 45 per cent reduction in emissions. Otherwise, they are simply running a con on Australian consumers.

Last year, 2017, 1.2 million vehicles entered the Australian market—passenger vehicles; heavy, medium and light commercial vehicles; motorcycles; trailers. Most of those complied with Australian design rules. When we ask ourselves why government needs to regulate in this space and why we can't just leave it to the market, we have to be able to answer that question very clearly. The reason is: for a market to work, consumers need information. When it comes to buying a road vehicle, there are many features that you need to know when you are making that purchase decision that are not transparent or that you can't see. That is why we need to set road designs for vehicles.

There were also some interesting figures that I noted from the minister's speech. He noted that, when the Motor Vehicle Standards Amendment Act 1989 was first introduced—it was last reviewed 17 years ago—there were 9.4 million vehicles registered on the road and we had 2,500 Australians killed in road accidents. Yes, we've been very successful in getting that down. Even now, we've got almost double the number of vehicles on the roads—almost 19 million—compared to only a little over nine million in 1989. We've been able to bring that road toll down from 2,500 to 1,300—1,300 Australians died on our roads last year. If we put that in any other context, we would need to do more. We need to make sure that the policies of this government are to do everything that we possibly can, to get every dollar that we humanly can into improving the quality of our roads, and to ensure that our design standards give us the safest cars. When it comes to a clash over whether we should go down some track of trying to achieve a 45 per cent reduction in our CO2 emissions from motor vehicles or whether we should try to make our motor vehicles and our roads safer, when we have over a thousand Australians that die every year on our roads, that is a no-brainer. It's not only the road deaths that we have. Road trauma is estimated to cost our community $27 billion per annum, yet the terrible human impact is something you cannot put an economic number or a dollar value on. So I would hope that, when we sit down and debate what we are going to do in the space of road transportation, we give absolute first priority to making our roads safer, to upgrading them and to making vehicles safer first. That should be the priority of this government.

With that, I commend the minister for his good work on this bill. It makes some important changes which are needed, as we have seen substantial improvements and upgrades in technology, and we need to all work together in this House to make our roads and to make our vehicles safer. I commend this bill to the House.

See this speech in context