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

Thank you, Senator Van, and thank you also for joining with the government and other senators in this place to finally bring in the new vehicle efficiency standards that Australian motorists have needed for a very long time. Of course, these standards were opposed by the coalition, just as they opposed actually progressing them at any point in the last 10 years. I remember Senator Sharma had a bit to say in favour of new vehicle efficiency standards when he was over on the other side of the building, but he underwent some kind of weird transformation as he drifted across to this chamber. He was put into re-education by all the conservatives in the Liberal Party, whom he's now joined. I actually don't know what he thinks about this anymore, and I'm not sure if he knows what he thinks either.

But Senator Van knows what he thinks, and he supported these new vehicle efficiency standards, which are obviously important from an environmental point of view but are also vital to ensure that Australians don't pay more for their petrol than they have to do in the future. What we saw very clearly was there were some senators, including Senator Van, Labor senators and other crossbench senators, who thought what we needed to be doing was driving down petrol costs for Australians by making it cheaper for them to get low-emission vehicles—or making it possible for them to get low emission vehicles. We know that there still are two parties in this chamber, the Liberals and the Nationals, that want Australians to keep paying more for petrol, even those in the regions, who have to travel longer distances and rack up bigger petrol bills.

Senator Van, I'm very happy to have a chat with the minister, Minister King, about the issue that you've raised. It hasn't been raised with me before that there are any issues when it comes to the approvals process for new vehicles, or however it was that you described it. I'm happy to have that conversation with Minister King, but I do think that it is very important for Australians going forward that they will have more choice in the future and will be able to choose lower-emission vehicles, which is good for the environment but very good for their household budgets as well.