Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am listening to my electorate and will continue to stand up for my electorate and for action on climate change, because future generations—our children, our grandchildren—will judge us for what we do right now in this place. Science tells us that we have a small window to reverse the damage before it can no longer be reversed, so we must transform our energy industry and transport, food, agriculture and forestry systems to ensure that we can limit global temperature rises. I, for one, will not waste the opportunity that I have as a member of parliament to raise this urgency. We are fortunate that we now have a government that sees and understands this urgency.

We recently successfully legislated our climate change targets. This means we have enshrined into law our emissions reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. This is historical and important for many reasons, but primarily because it gives businesses, industries and investors certainty—certainty to invest in renewable energy, new clean technologies and storage. And, after a decade of uncertainty caused by the previous government's denial, division and scaremongering, this certainty cannot come soon enough.

But that is not the only thing we are doing. Passenger cars make up almost 10 per cent of Australia's CO2 emissions, and it's imperative that we begin to change that. This is why we have a positive policy to increase the uptake of electric vehicles, for example. This is, once again, desperately needed, because Australia lags the world in the take-up of electricity cars—and why is that? It's because the previous government also ran a scare campaign against electric vehicles. We heard about the lost weekends—that our weekends would be gone once electric vehicles came in. Who can forget the former Prime Minister telling the nation that electric vehicles were going to destroy the Australian weekend? And the other day we heard, 'there goes your ute, because there are no electric utes'. And the following day the minister for climate change proved the shadow minister wrong by producing photographs of utes that were electric-powered. Currently in Australia just 1.5 per cent of cars sold are electric or plug-in hybrid. This is compared with 17 per cent in the UK and 85 per cent in Norway. There are only around 24,000 registered electric vehicles on Australian roads, out of a total of around 15 million cars.

Australians, from what we hear, are saying that they want to buy electric cars but that they remain unaffordable for most people. This is why the government is introducing the electric car discount: to make electric cars or electric vehicles cheaper, so that more families who want to buy them can afford them. And this will reduce emissions. The government is committed to a range of discounts that will make electric vehicles more affordable and this includes exempting many electric cars from import tariffs. In addition, there's an exemption on fringe benefits tax on electric vehicles that are provided through work for private use. These exemptions are offered for vehicles valued under the luxury car threshold. The idea is that car manufacturers will be encouraged to import and supply more affordable electric models in Australia. We're also working with industry, unions, states and consumers to develop Australia's first national EV or electric vehicle strategy. This will include further measures to increase electric car sales and infrastructure. We will also explore policy settings to encourage Australian manufacturing of electric vehicle components, especially batteries—this is an area we know we can contribute to—and possibly cars themselves. We'll also investigate ways to address the policy implications of declining fuel excise.

These are just some examples of the ways that we're taking real action to address climate change. I could also point to the growth in renewables storage and growing our battery industry. Many of us on this side of the House are proud to be a part of a government that is finally taking climate action with the urgency it deserves, with the urgency that this planet deserves, and with the urgency that the next generation of Australians deserve—that is, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I, for one, don't want to be in this place and have my great-grandchildren say, 'What did you do when you were in parliament?' and have nothing to show for it.