Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How will the new vehicle efficiency standard give Australians more choice and make it cheaper to run new cars? What is standing in the way of giving Australians access to cleaner cars?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fraser for his question. Of course it was Roosevelt who said that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. But fear is all they have over there. There's just a second-hand scare campaign running on empty and the warmed-up leftovers of governments past. To those opposite, a car is nothing more than a scare campaign on wheels. We've seen it with utes. We saw it when, in the 2019 campaign, they said that electric vehicles would end the weekend.

Fuel standards are about giving Australians more choice of the latest vehicles that are cleaner and cheaper to run. That is why we offered bipartisan support when the Liberal Party, under that minister, wanted to introduce fuel efficiency standards. Every other developed country in the world has fuel efficiency standards except one: Russia. The Leader of the Opposition can line up with Vladimir Putin. I'll line up with the United States and the rest of the developed world. Russia is a country as famous for the quality of its cars as it is for the quality of its democracy. But this bloke thinks it's okay. He was down there in Dunkley at the used-car yard happy to stand up and try to sell the Morrison scare campaign from back in 2019. The Leader of the Opposition's used-car model is noisy, unreliable and only turns right. It only works in reverse and won't ever go forward. It only goes backwards. It won't drive in Melbourne at night—you've got to remember all of those migrants. And it's made entirely of glass. It's a bit of a bold design move from this guy. Like the bulldozer from Cook, who has left, it's designed to wreck, not to build.

What we're doing is building a stronger economy. What we're doing is saving Australians money. What we're doing is boosting their wages. What we're doing is cutting their taxes. What we're doing is building in new efficiencies—not being afraid of the future but shaping the future. If you don't, the future sorts you out. The fact is that you can't just pretend that this is not happening. When I was transport minister as far back as in 2008, there was research being done on an internal combustion engine. It was all about future vehicles that are cheaper to run and are more efficient, which is what our policy is about.

I table the media release from today 'Toyota launches all-new bZ4X BEV' about a new SUV being launched by Toyota, and on that note I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.