Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Good. Senator Boswell interjects, ‘Polar bears will be saved,’ and that even gets Senator Conroy to smile, which is a pleasant change. So well done on that, Senator Boswell. But more seriously, this is once again classic Mr Rudd: all symbolism and no real substance. How many car sales is it going to impact? On current sales figures, 1,500 motor vehicles in a climate where we are now selling about one million motor vehicles per year. That is going to have a huge impact on the environment, isn’t it? What a great piece of work this is! But of course that is what happens when Labor and the Greens cobble these things together. Nobody could argue that this is going to have a serious impact on climate change. It is nothing but window-dressing.

I would like to ask the minister: how does this fit in with a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme? Are these amendments consistent and are they the least costly way to reduce the emissions? You see, fuel economy is not a good measure of environmental impact. Diesel powered motor vehicles—and this is going to clearly benefit imported, luxury motor vehicles at the expense of the Australian car industry—have higher carbon dioxide emissions than petrol and LPG at the same fuel economy. So a petrol engine with fuel consumption of seven litres per 100 kilometres produces 166 grams of carbon dioxide, and a diesel engine produces 184 grams of carbon dioxide. That is around 10 per cent higher. The fact that it is 10 per cent higher is okay, according to the government and the Greens. But, you see, your seven litres per 100 kilometres for diesel, if you are consistent, should be translating in rough terms to 7.7 litres for a petrol engine. ‘No, we haven’t done the research. We haven’t done the homework. We don’t bother about these things.’ Because Mr Rudd is into symbolism. That is all—symbolism. And that is all that the Greens are in fact going to get.

Then we have LPG vehicles that have even lower carbon dioxide emissions than petrol and diesel. However, they tend to use a bit more fuel. So, really, if it were going to be an LPG vehicle, you could get potentially a better environmental outcome from a vehicle that uses eight to nine litres per 100 kilometres.

If you are concerned about environmental damage, I would suggest that you would be doing it on the basis of emissions coming out of the tailpipe and not on the amount of fuel that is actually used. What this is going to do is support the diesel engines against petrol and LPG engines, which of course might be better for the environment. But what is more, this is a very old-fashioned way of going about things because there is now a Euro 5 standard. These engines are considered the most environmentally advanced engines and are required to achieve extremely low levels of emissions of gases, including nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter. But these amendments will not exempt those engines known as the Euro 5 standard. So how old-fashioned and behind the times is this? Once again, it was cobbled together on the run. And of course there are no hybrids included in this list either.

Then we look at what else this legislation is going to do. As I understand the amendments, this will exempt a motor vehicle within the price bracket of $57,180 to $75,000 that was ordered even before the budget announcement—ordered before this amendment was cobbled together. So we have got the prospect of somebody, having ordered a motor vehicle in, say, February of this year with a nine- or 10-month delivery time, which is not unusual, all of a sudden getting a tax windfall of no longer having to pay luxury car tax when it arrived after 1 July. They will get it all back. But if perchance the vehicle was delivered on 30 June they would not get such a tax benefit. Why not? What is the rationale? I would expect the minister to answer that later on in the debate.

At this stage, I would ask the minister if he could provide us with a full list of those vehicles that are now going to be exempted. And, yes, there will be Alfa Romeos, Jaguars and all those types of cars in there, but I would like to hear the list. There are only 25 cars and I think it would be of great benefit—