Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday the Prime Minister excused this government's woeful record on sustainable transport by claiming that hydrogen was a new technology. Well, I've got a newsflash for you. The Western Australian Labor government ran a hydrogen bus trial in 2004 as part of an international collaboration. Three buses covered more than 260,000 kilometres carrying more than 330,000 passengers. The truth is that there have been electric and hydrogen alternatives in transport for years and years and years. Technology hasn't changed. With this government, it's the falsehoods that come thick and fast. In 2019 the Prime Minister ridiculed electric vehicles; now he pretends that hydrogen only happened yesterday.

The truth is that the man who, with every passing day, piles untruth upon untruth in a kind of dishonest lasagne is trying to bury the falsehood from 2019 with a brand-new falsehood. Thanks to eight years of coalition ignorance and inaction, we have a woefully low uptake of electric vehicles, which means we've achieved no emissions reductions in transport. It means we'll be a dumping ground for the motor vehicle dregs of the future. It means we'll continue to be vulnerable because of our liquid fuel security. And Australians will have no choice but to suffer from petrol price spikes. These are big, serious risks about which this government has done nothing. The urgent climate and energy challenge has not changed, but if you want to end the dishonesty and incompetence, you have to change this awful government.

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