Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. There was a lot in there, but I'm just going to focus on the new vehicle efficiency standards, because on this side of the House we've had enough of Australian motorists being second-class citizens and being the dumping ground for motoring companies to send cars to Australia that they're not allowed to send to other countries. What the Minister for Transport and I have been doing is a very similar process to that taken by the previous government when they thought about doing this: putting out a preferred model and consulting on it. That's what we've been doing. That consultation is very close to a conclusion, and we'll have more to say. Of course we've looked at the recent developments in the United States as part of that, but the difference is that, when the member for Bradfield consulted on his preferred model, he got rolled and they rolled over the policy. They were happy to have Australian motorists treated at the back of the queue of the world's car companies. We are not. We think it's about time Australia had similar standards to the rest of the world and we got out of the G2 of Australia and Russia, as the only two countries without efficiency standards.

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