Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, before you have a heart attack: yes, I am supporting electric vehicles. People know that I've been a petrolhead all my life. I've been involved with cars and am very passionate about our motor cars. But if someone like me can sit there and look at the technology that we see today in motor vehicles—where places like EV West in the United States are taking Tesla type engines and fitting those to classic vehicles so that we can still enjoy our weekends, tow our boats and go for a cruise on a Saturday when it's a nice, sunny afternoon—then I think anyone can. That's the importance of really understanding what technology's about and what it leads to.

So I'm speaking in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Electric Car Discount) Bill 2022, a bill that exempts from FBT the use of eligible electric cars made available for employees. FBT is something that has been, I guess, a bit of a problem in trying to introduce electric vehicles and bring those into the country, but it's also been a bit of a barrier for people to be able to do it, because of the cost. So, through many organisations where you can salary-sacrifice and have the ability to purchase an electric vehicle, we should be taking every opportunity.

The one thing that we have to do in this place is to make sure that we leave the country in a better condition than it was in when we got here, and we do that by ensuring that we do things that lessen our impact on the climate, the environment and the future for our kids and grandkids. That's the most important thing we can do, and we do that by cutting pollution. Whether we are talking about carbon pricing or about anything else, the most important thing is that what it's about is cutting pollution and making sure that in the future our farmers can farm, our businesses can grow, we've got clean drinking water and we've got the opportunity to have cleaner air that's just going to take away a whole heap of medical things—hay fever and the like.

So it's important that we do that, and it's important that we have a government that says, 'Right, we're going to get on with this and develop the technologies and give people the support to be able to use electric vehicles and make them affordable so that families can have them,' because this is one of the biggest costs in areas like the one that I have the honour of representing, the seat of McEwen. We don't have a great range of public transport in outer suburban rural areas. We have a couple of train lines and a few buses, but that's about it. So we rely heavily on motor vehicles to get to work or to travel across the 30 towns to sporting grounds, to dance classes, to community events or to RSLs. Wherever we go, the motor vehicle is very much key to what we're doing. In fact, we have one of the highest numbers of cars per household in all of the nation. With the expansion of our communities, that's created more issues on our roads. It's created issues that have been neglected for the last 10 years by the previous federal government. Every promise they made on roads they failed to deliver. With more cars on the road and more people moving, it creates more congestion.

When we look at what the government is doing in relation to electric vehicles, the removal of the FBT means that people will have the opportunity to purchase a vehicle at a more affordable price. With fuel hovering around $2 a litre for 91 to 95 ULP, that puts a massive impost on households. I think the ability to have an electric vehicle and charge it at home—which means that you have a vehicle that costs less to run and pollutes a hell of a lot less—is a very positive thing, and we should be doing everything we can to support this. We should be embracing this technology, and we should be embracing the opportunities that it brings.

It really pains me to think that at the moment we have an opposition bereft of policy that's sitting in the Senate deciding on whether or not they're actually going to support the concept of making motor vehicles cheaper. We know they have a problem with motor vehicles. They shut the automotive industry out. They haven't seen a car manufacturer they haven't wanted to kick out of the country, and they successfully did that. But now we have this issue we've faced through the pandemic with global supply chains.

An opposition member: You said that with a smile.

Well, it's an absolute truth: the entire automotive industry and the thousands upon thousands of jobs that went with it were removed because the former government tried to be big and brave and macho. We all remember the former member for Spence's magnificent speech where he said that Joseph Benedict Chifley introduced the first Australian motor vehicle to this country, and Joseph Benedict Hockey made sure the last one was produced in this country, and they all went offshore. I think those words should always be available to remind us and those opposite of the massive impact they had on manufacturing.

We're now in a situation where all motor vehicles are imported. Fringe benefits tax and the cost of importing make it dearer and harder for families to get motor vehicles. This FBT exemption forms part of our government's electric car discount, which also removes the import duties on electric and low-emission vehicles. That's a very big, important point in what our government is saying. We're looking for electric and low-emission vehicles. No longer should we be the dumping ground for leftover vehicles manufactured outside this country. We should be ahead. We should be in front of the game. We've had 10 years where this market has slowly been growing internationally, and the former government sat stagnant on it.

Right across this country, I've met with companies like NHP, who put the infrastructure in place. One of the big barriers for people is actually having the charging points, the infrastructure, available to move. Also there is the growing fear that we have with our service station industries about what's going to happen in the future. I think of AA Holdings, who develop and run BP service stations on the Hume Highway. They're already ahead of the game. They're already sitting there thinking, 'We need to change our business model to suit electric vehicles.' That means charging stations that you don't just drive nose into or reverse into. That's very difficult if you're towing a caravan or a boat. Also, there need to be more and more charging stations in place to maximise the opportunity for people that need to stop. Charging a vehicle doesn't take eight minutes like it does to fill your car and get out of there. It takes a bit longer. They want to be able to develop their sites so that, when customers come in and charge their vehicles, they've got something to do rather than just sit at Macca's for half an hour, get a burger and then scoot off.

It is important to listen to the voices of the people who are in the industry, people have actually put their cash into it—small businesses that are growing and that employ people right across our regions. You'd think that the so-called party of small business would be listening to them, but they're not. They're failing. That's why we're working closely with the Victorian government to work with these visionary businesses to bring these developments to reality, support electric vehicles and bring more jobs into our communities. It's just so important that we do that.

We do that because our government, the Victorian government, the business community and the workers are all working together to say: 'These are the opportunities we have. This is where we're moving, going forward. Let's work together, embrace the technologies and build on that so that we build a cleaner, greener future.' If companies can develop electric vehicle engines to fit in 1957 Chevs, then I think the opposition have a duty of care to support the price reduction of electric vehicles and the removal of FBT to make them cheaper and more affordable for people to get. It's so important that we do this now, for the future, so that our future generations get every opportunity they can and the opportunity to have a better future, because that's the key in what we're supposed to be doing in this place.

Look at what we're doing with electric vehicles as part of the whole Powering Australia plan. We have set the targets. We've got to deliver the emissions targets of 43 per cent by 2030 and net zero by 2050. We've put this in place because we want to be able to say, 'Let's measure what's going on, where we're going and how we're going to achieve it.' We're not going to do it by keeping on flitting around. We've had 10 years of the climate wars. We've had 10 years of energy policy that's been all over the shop. It's time that we face what we're doing and head forward, and the only way that we do that is with a government that listens.

I think that's the breath of fresh air that people have seen with the election of the Albanese Labor government. It's a government that's actually on their side, a government that's going to work with them together to create a better Australia, not sit there where with every single measure we look at—whether it's education, health or communications—we've been falling down the rankings. This is actually a government that wants to go forward. We actually think that being at the forefront of emerging technologies and development is so important for our future, and it's something that the opposition needs to get on board with.

So I fully support what we're doing here. I think it's a great step on the path to a better Australia and a great step on the path to a cleaner Australia. Working together with governments, businesses, and individuals makes a real difference to our environment. So supporting initiatives like these is so important. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

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