Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

There is no evidence whatsoever, from international experiences, that prices of vehicles under a new fuel efficiency standard will increase in the way Senator McKenzie suggests. Mr Fletcher made that point back in May 2018, when he said that, when America introduced fuel efficiency standards, 'There wasn't a material change in price and we don't expect that there would be a material change in price here.' But what we have, as expected, is the same old scare campaigns from the National Party. What we have is 'ending the weekend mark 2'. I notice that Senator McKenzie went awfully close to reinventing the weekend attack when she said on Sky News on 5 February that Australians want the work car to be their weekend car. They had to get the word 'weekend' in there somewhere, Pavlovian style. 'We're almost Scottish en masse where we don't want a work car and a separate weekend car. We like them to be together.' That's Senator McKenzie. Unfortunately for Senator McKenzie, Senator Sharma was on Sky News the same day, and we'll get to that shortly. (Time expired)