Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise today to speak about the Treasury Laws Amendment (Electric Car Discount) Bill 2022. Electric vehicles are an absolutely critical part of decarbonising our economy and our society, and in moving Australia to 100 per cent renewable energy and zero-carbon future. That's what we need to do as urgently as possible, because we are in a climate crisis. We know we're in a climate crisis: we have the floods around us at the moment and we had the Black Summer fires three years ago. Around the world, two-thirds of Pakistan is underwater. This is an emergency. We've just had the State of the climate 2022 report released this week, and it showed what is in front of us unless we tackle our carbon pollution urgently. Australia is in the box seat to be able to do that. We have the technology, the resources and the renewable energy resources; we can shift our energy needs to 100 per cent renewables as quickly as possible—probably more quickly than any other country in the world. And yet we have been such laggards over the last eight years.

We now have a new government that is taking some small steps forward. The Greens know that we need to go much faster and much further in tackling the climate crisis than this government is, but we will support every small step forward along the way. That's what this bill is: it's one of those small steps forward. Electric vehicles are an incredibly important part of decarbonising our transport system. We're really pleased to say that we have pushed the government further and faster on electric vehicles in our negotiations on this bill.

One in every five tonnes of our carbon pollution in Australia comes from transport—20 per cent. We need to get out of dirty, polluting, fossil fuel vehicles and into 100 per cent renewable vehicles as quickly as possible. We also need, of course, to invest in public transport. Most of the trams and trains around the country already run on electricity, at least within suburban areas. If they're being fuelled by renewable energy then we have a zero-carbon public transport system. We also need to be investing in walking and cycling, which are a critical part of our transport mix.

In fact, if you look at what our vision for transport is, the rule of thumb I like to use is about a one-third, one-third, one-third mix of our transport. So you continue to have one-third of private vehicle use to account for all of those trips where you really do need that private vehicle to get you from A to B. If all of those private vehicle trips and road trips—and freight trips as well—are fuelled by renewable energy, then you have zero carbon in that part of the sector.

Then you have about one-third on public transport, whether that's within cities or connecting people between cities, like we were talking about yesterday with high speed rail. Then about one-third of those trips should be walking and cycling, which are the ultimate zero carbon trips, where you just get out there. For cycling, it could be on bikes that are human powered, which I am a great advocate of, commuter cycling, to get around everywhere, or on electric bikes, which mean that the benefits of cycling are available to a wider range of people for a greater number and length of trips. That one-third, one-third, one-third mix means we can focus on rapidly shifting away from dirty polluting vehicles to clean electric vehicles.

This bill will take some small steps. It will be tackling the fact that, at the moment, if you're a fleet owner, it is very expensive to be converting your fleet to electric vehicles. This will make it easier and give tax discounts, to make it more affordable for fleets to be electric vehicles. We are really pleased in what we have been able to do with this bill, in negotiations with the government, of saying that we want to be shifting those fleets to electric vehicles. Originally, this bill included plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which are fake electric vehicles, because we know those plug-in hybrids aren't electric vehicles. They are not renewable. About half of the use of those plug-in hybrid vehicles is still running on dirty fossil fuels.

What we have negotiated with the government—and there will be an amendment that both the Greens and Senator David Pocock have put forward, in our negotiations with the government—is that those plug-in hybrids will be phased out. There will be a sunset clause so that they will only be included under these tax discounts for three years. We think that's a reasonable compromise, because we know there are a shortage of electric vehicles in this country at the moment. We've been such laggards that the electric vehicle manufacturers haven't wanted to bring their electric vehicles to Australia. So because there's an issue of increasing the availability of electric vehicles, we'll allow plug-in hybrids for the next three years, but phase them out.

Within the next three years there should be no need for anybody to have plug-in hybrids and people should be encouraged, supported, if they're needing to buy a vehicle for it to be an electric vehicle. We know that countries in Europe have phase-out dates of 2030, for all new cars to be electric vehicles. So phasing out subsidies and support for plug-in hybrids in three years time is a pretty reasonable and modest thing to do.

The other key thing that we have negotiated with the government, with this bill, is a commitment that all of the Commonwealth fleet procurement will be 100 per cent electric, which is amazing and pretty significant. If you have fleet requirements where currently there isn't the recharging infrastructure available, there will be exceptional circumstances, where those vehicles, within the Commonwealth fleet, could be plug-in hybrids. But the default is that Commonwealth procurement and the Commonwealth fleet will become electric as quickly as possible.

Not only is that good for Commonwealth vehicles but it means we can shift all of those kilometres to 100 per cent renewable as soon as those electric vehicles are in the fleet. It also means that, because they will be in the fleet, there will be a greater availability of second-hand electric vehicles in the market, which is important. We know that, as cars move out of fleets, they've still got a lot of life left in them and it's more affordable for people to purchase a second-hand vehicle, so this is going to be a really critical difference in making electric vehicles more affordable for everybody across the country. That'll be the case when you've got a good stream of second-hand electric vehicles, rather than the case at the moment when most of the second-hand electric vehicles that people are purchasing are being imported. Having that steady stream of electric vehicles from the Commonwealth fleet is going to be incredibly significant.

Of course, the other thing about excluding the plug-in hybrids from the Commonwealth fleet is that that will save the Commonwealth a lot of money because continuing to subsidise the use of plug-in hybrids means that you are continuing to subsidise having to fuel them with petrol and diesel. It's going to save the Department of Finance a lot of money—in fact, the estimate is that the amendments that are to be moved by me and Senator Pocock will save the government up to $935 million over a decade. That's almost a billion dollars compared with what the government first proposed. That means we won't be permanently baking in yet another fossil fuel subsidy on top of the fossil fuel subsidies that are continuing—$40 million and counting on the pile of handouts to the coal, gas and oil sectors.

When it comes to those subsidies, in talking about transport, moving on the diesel fuel rebate would be such an easy thing to do. At the moment we are subsidising the use of diesel fuel, which is just crazy. At the same time as we're saying we need to do something about the climate crisis, we are still giving massive handouts to subsidise the use of polluting diesel fuel. Imagine if, instead of spending almost a billion dollars on subsidising diesel fuel, we had more incentives to encourage the heavy-vehicle freight industry to shift their fleet to 100 per cent renewable vehicles, to electric and hydrogen vehicles. We have plenty of heavy movers, trucks and trains that are currently running on diesel in Australia. but there are plenty of examples elsewhere in the world and, in fact, beginning in Australia where we see electric heavy movers and hydrogen run trains, so it is possible. It just needs the political will and the incentives.

Rather than incentivising the pollution, incentivising the things that are absolutely turbocharging the climate crisis, we should be incentivising the solutions and supporting the rapid transition to 100 per cent clean energy. You might want to spend some of the $935 million on charging infrastructure in the regions, for example, so that it is really easy for people to charge their electric vehicles no matter where they are. We know that, with charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, it's going to be straightforward, it's going to be viable, it's going to be economic for the private sector to put charging infrastructure in the cities. But out there in the regions there will need to be more government support for charging infrastructure. There is a need for more investment in charging infrastructure, particularly government investment in charging infrastructure, in the regions.

As I said at the start of my contribution, this is a small step forward that the Greens are happy to support. But it's not a revolutionary one. It's an improvement on the status quo, and it's going to benefit, in addition to Commonwealth and government fleets, a very narrow class of employees by creating incentives for companies to buy electric vehicles. Through our negotiations, it creates those incentives for the Commonwealth fleet too. These measures will increase the supply of affordable second-hand EVs in the market. But for your average person who hasn't got a vehicle through their employer, is not doing salary sacrifice—they work for a small business or there is no connection between who they work for and the vehicle they drive—we need a whole range of other things to make electric vehicles more affordable.

The big piece of the puzzle, which is yet to come and we urge the government to take urgent action on, is implementing vehicle emissions standards so that we, frankly, are not able to sell polluting vehicles in this country. Those vehicles are going to continue to fuel the climate crisis, and we need to have vehicle emissions standards and CO2 standards—and we need to ramp them up over time—so that within a pretty short space of time all vehicles have to be 100 per cent nonpolluting, zero carbon. This is what urgently needs to happen, and actually introducing those vehicle emissions standards is critical and urgent. It's a policy that the Greens have been championing over the years, and we are going to continue to bring it into the parliament. That is what is going to drive the supply of electric vehicles here in Australia, and without it we know that manufacturers are sending their electric vehicles off elsewhere because they're not seeing anything to support the rapid uptake of electric vehicles here. It's a difficult market, so, in a time of constrained supply, they just say, 'No, we'll send them off elsewhere,' where they know the market is stronger.

So we've got a message to the government: we will support this bill, but we want to see a really thorough electric vehicle strategy that takes the serious action that's needed; that doesn't include fake electric vehicles, the plug-in hybrids, as part of it; and that really takes seriously the role of transport and transforming our transport and vehicle fleet to 100 per cent clean energy. That's what's needed. That's what the Greens are going to continue to push for. We know that's where we need to head as quickly as possible to tackle the role that our transport system is playing in the climate crisis and the role that it can play in effectively tackling the climate crisis.