Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bennelong very much for the question, because he knows that there are substantial cost-of-living benefits to Australians from getting more efficient and cleaner vehicles into the Australian market.

People may not know, but the new vehicle efficiency standard has been on the books as a policy idea for decades; it's been coalition policy for nearly a quarter of a century. John Howard went to the 2001 election promising:

The Coalition is negotiating new fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles to reduce the amount of fuel consumed per kilometre travelled.

The most recent coalition government, where the Leader of the Opposition was seated at the cabinet table, was committed to delivering an efficiency standard with, of course, the member for Bradfield, who said:

Although Australia accounts for less than two per cent of the global new vehicle market, it is becoming increasingly important that we harmonise our approaches to vehicle emissions with those in place in other countries.

And, of course, according to media reports, as late as yesterday the Leader of the Opposition told his party room that efficiency standards continue to be coalition policy.

The coalition, frankly, are all talk and no delivery. They are too scared of their own shadows to deliver on their own policies. When anything gets a little bit too hard, they curl up into a ball. They are the scared, weird little guys of Australian politics.

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