Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about electric vehicles. I want to say to you, Mr President, it's rare, but from time to time you call me, and I always answer. However, tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, don't bother, because I'll be in a Tesla car doing a bit of a spin around Canberra. I'll be doing that because I recognise that electric cars are the future. However, what we have to work out is how Australia slots into that future.

The world is shifting away from internal combustion engines. Norway has set a deadline of 2025 to cease sales of new fossil fuel powered cars. Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Israel and the UK have set 2030 as their target. Quebec in Canada plans to ban gasoline powered cars from 2035. California will do the same, adding trucks to the ban list. Australia could end up being the dumping ground for outdated internal combustion engine technology that other nations no longer accept. The EU has imposed a fines system for vehicle manufacturers selling vehicles that exceed CO2 emission targets. This is a contributing factor to the situation where manufacturers won't ship their newest EVs to Australia because they need them to offset emissions in Europe.

Electric vehicles are the future, and we need to be making an investment in that future. We so often hear the claim that range anxiety detracts from electric vehicle take-up. It's a genuine concern for many; I understand the situation. However, the fact that you've got range anxiety is not a basis to do nothing about it. It should be a basis for recognising that a solution is required. We need to get infrastructure in place. We need to install more chargers. It fits in neatly with the Stop, Revive, Survive campaigns to address fatigue and reduce road fatalities. We heard Senator Rice talking today about the need to stop, go to the toilet, have something to eat and all those sorts of things, not just as part of Stop, Revive, Survive but as part of our normal functions—to be able to stop by the side of the road and spend 20 minutes filling up a car. We need to invest in R&D with the aim of developing batteries with higher energy density.

Last month, a Hyundai Nexo EV powered by a hydrogen fuel cell travelled from Melbourne to Broken Hill and beyond on one tank of hydrogen, a distance of 887.5 kilometres, setting a new range record for fuel-cell powered vehicles. A little under two weeks ago, a Toyota Mirai EV utilising a hydrogen fuel cell travelled 1,003 kilometres across France on a single tank, usurping the previous distance record. Technology is the answer, but it won't occur miraculously. It requires a plan and investment. That investment doesn't have to come from government, but the government is the only one that can lay out a national plan in which that investment would sit. Deferrals may be justified, but they should only be on the basis of a new technology being available in the near term.

We need a charging network. We've had a national EV charging network infrastructure plan since February 2019. It's still waiting to have a proponent identified, let alone to be implemented. We have fewer than 2,500 charging stations. Norway, in contrast, has around 10,000 public charging stations. We've got 25 million people and 2½ thousand public charging stations; Norway has five million people and 10,000 public charging stations. The UK added 7,000 new charging locations last year alone and now has over 15,000 charging locations, with over 24,000 charging points. All of this could happen if we had a national strategy, but, despite its having been promised two years ago, the national strategy for electric vehicles is still not available.

It seems that the lack of a plan is a consistent theme for this government. A tagline is not a plan. Net-zero emissions by 2050 sounds good, but how will it be achieved? The uptake of EVs has to form part of an emissions plan. Cars account for about half of Australia's transport emissions, which makes them responsible for around eight per cent of Australia's total. In the absence of national guidance, the states are going ahead and laying out their own electric vehicle strategies and, in some cases, plans to tax electric vehicles. We're having a rail gauge fiasco here. I invite all you senators to come to Peterborough in South Australia, because you'll find there that we have three different rail gauges: narrow gauge, standard gauge and broad gauge. That's what we had in Australia because we didn't have a national plan, and we're doing the same thing with electric vehicles. If that happens with EVs across Australia, we're going to end up with different charging stations, different charging arrangements and different taxes right across the states. We want to have a situation where we have vehicle-to-grid chargers. We want to have cars that can plug into your home, with the technology to draw from the network when the network has lots of capacity and perhaps contribute back to the network when it doesn't. We want to make sure that a car from South Australia can plug in in Victoria and do vehicle-to-grid. That's sensible stuff, but it requires that a plan be laid out.

We need to think about heavy vehicles. Thus far, we've mostly focused on passenger vehicles. We need to consider heavy vehicles—buses, trucks and road trains. I've been out to BusTech at Edinburgh in South Australia and I've seen their buses under construction, including electric buses. I've also seen the challenges they're facing in dealing with the environment of not having a plan. Should we be electrifying rail lines or investing in commuter trains powered by hydrogen fuel cells and the associated hydrogen refuelling stations? What about farm implementation, mining equipment and overland rail? This all requires prior planning to bring these vehicles into service. Again, road user charges based on a user-pays model—that's an easily understood concept and the principle makes sense, but it's also clear that the current fuel excise model will have to change. The schemes being developed are quite flawed. We have a system in place for fuel excise whereby you have a difference between the heavy vehicles and the light vehicles. We don't have that in place for electric vehicles. It doesn't deal with such variations. That doesn't help.

We have got to develop a national strategy for electric vehicles, a strategy that will ensure we maximise the economic, environmental and social benefits that electric vehicles can bring. We need to think about leading developments in these areas, where we can take advantage as a country. We can back local EV manufacturing, like we have in South Australia with ACE Vehicles—and I do thank the government for responding to my advocacy in that regard. How about we create a local capacity in battery manufacturing? Electric cars are the future. We have trainloads of lithium in Western Australia that could be utilised for that purpose. We need to be investing in R&D and establishing apprenticeships and traineeships in the EV sector. We can't just sit back and wait and see what happens. We need to have a plan. Unfortunately, we don't have a plan, and that's the fault of the government, which promised one but has simply sat quiet and done nothing.