Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll return to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Electric Car Discount) Bill 2022. I have just a few more paragraphs of my contribution to add in conclusion.

In government, the coalition's Future Fuels and Vehicles Strategy was part of our plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. The coalition provided a detailed strategy for a technology led approach to reduce transport emissions based on the principles of partnering with the private sector to support uptake and to stimulate co-investment in future fuels; focusing on reducing barriers to the rollout of future fuel technologies, not taxes; and expanding consumer choice by enabling informed choices and by minimising the costs of integration into the grid. And, again, in government, the coalition committed $2.1 billion to help increase the uptake of low- and zero-emission vehicle technologies.

With increasing pressure on inflation, ensuring there's a demonstratable benefit to government expenditure is even more important now than it was before. But this is not what this bill does. As the coalition senators pointed out in the Senate Economics Committee report, most Australians will be unable to benefit from this tax policy change, which is extremely narrow in its application. It will mean that people working in small businesses are less likely to access the proposed tax policy change due to the lower level of use of salary packaging in small and medium businesses. For these reasons, the opposition will not support the government's bill.

My second reading amendment, which has already been circulated in my name, outlines the points that I have made today and also in my previous contribution. I move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) with this policy the Government has failed to:

(A) establish clear criteria and metrics of success for the policy,

(B) ensure the expenditure is temporary, proportionate, and linked to tangible productivity gains,

(C) quantify any benefit of the policy to electric vehicle uptake, to emissions reduction, or the budget bottom line,

(D) tangibly address the biggest constraint on electric vehicle uptake, which is supply and infrastructure, and

(E) consult with business and civil society on policy design,

(ii) the legislation does not address the core supply issues of electric vehicles, and will not substantially close the consequent cost gap between electric vehicles and non-electric vehicles,

(iii) the Coalition supports increased uptake of low and zero emissions vehicles and the Coalition government's focus was on enabling consumer choice when it comes to new vehicle and fuel technologies, and

(iv) the Coalition is focused on partnering with industry to support the uptake of new vehicle technologies and creating the necessary enabling environment to support uptake, which includes helping to support the infrastructure roll-out and ensuring that the electricity grid is ready; and

(b) calls on the Government to invest the substantial medium-term cost of the measure in supporting practical electric vehicle infrastructure and cost of living relief for hard working Australians".

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Electric Car Discount) Bill 2022. Does anyone remember, during the 2019 election, federal Labor's attempt to end the weekend? Well, they've only been in office for a little while and here they are at it. I'm going to explain to you why, because no-one so far has given any explanation as to how we're going to solve this issue.

Western Australia is known for its wonderful outdoor lifestyle. Whether it's during school holidays or over the long weekend, many Western Australians, including myself, hitch up a caravan or a camper trailer and head out to the great outdoors. There's no better way to see and experience Western Australia than on a road trip with a caravan in tow, whether that be into the state's beautiful south-west or up the coast to somewhere like Exmouth, both trips that I've undertaken in the last year or so.

Earlier this year, the RAC published an article entitled 'Can an electric car tow a caravan or boat?' Naturally, I took an interest in this. Could this article point to the future of family weekend travel? The article outlined the virtues and merits of electric vehicles and the advantages and disadvantages of towing with an EV. However, two lines stood out to me, and they go to the core of the discussion that we're having here today. One quote from the article said:

In principle, an EV is well suited to towing, albeit with limitations.

And it says of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles:

… they may be better suited to occasional towing rather than long distance adventures.

It is one thing for inner city members in this place to preach that everyone should be driving EVs. That makes a lot of sense if all you're doing is taking a short drive, if you're driving a passenger vehicle to somewhere like Byron Bay for the long weekend to visit the beach house. If that's all the driving you do, then, yes, it would seem as if everyone else should be doing that too. But it disregards the everyday practicalities of working families whose only annual luxury might be lugging a camper trailer up the highway for a couple of days away.

An EV might be capable of towing a boat to the Cockburn boat ramp 15 kilometres away, but what about towing that boat from Perth down to Busselton, more than 200 kilometres away? EV technology—more specifically, the capacity of EV batteries and the speed of charging—is simply impractical for anything other than city driving. It's another example of ideology blinding peoples' sensibility and reason.

There was much publicity in California around its ban on the sale of petrol vehicles by the year 2035. Its own clean vehicle incentive program offers rebates as much as US$7,000 towards the cost of zero-emission vehicles, although cars costing more than US$45,000 do not qualify. Ironically, a mere week after the announcement, the California Independent System Operator put out a statewide alert to conserve energy, including a request to avoid charging electric vehicles in order to prevent strain on the state's power grid.

Here, in Australia, we have a government wanting to put more stress on an energy grid which is not currently equipped to deal with it. I can only imagine the surge in energy consumption if every Australian were forced to drive an EV and they arrived home between 5 and 6 pm and all plugged in at the same time, at a time of day when solar power generation is waning—which, incidentally, is why the government needs to be careful when considering subsidies and incentives for home charging.

The average consumer does not actually need a fast charger. I know this. I actually own an EV, people, so I'm not against EVs. But the average consumer does not actually need a fast charger. A 10-amp charger will recharge an average EV from 50 to 80 per cent overnight with no problem. Just because you can fast charge, it doesn't mean that you should. It makes no sense for everyone to plug in and charge quickly, which would put more demand on the grid, when the vehicle can be plugged in and charged overnight. So we must be careful when we're thinking about the infrastructure that we will be putting in place.

For those of us who are camping enthusiasts—and, as I've said, I'm one—the gross combined mass of a vehicle is one of most important specifications to look for in a tow vehicle. This measurement refers to the maximum weight that a vehicle can tow safely. Staying within your vehicle's towing capacity is particularly important when you're using an electric vehicle, as the more energy an EV expends the sooner it must be recharged. It's the basic law of physics.

Knowing your vehicle's towing capacity and range is even more critical when driving in remote areas or heading on a trip to the West Australian north-west, where towns are few and far between and using charging stations becomes more challenging. What was once a 10-minute exercise to fuel up and grab a coffee at a roadhouse could turn into an exercise of hours.

Some on the other side may say, 'Well, only 10 per cent of Australians might hook up a caravan or a heavy load on the weekend.' My response to that is: if Labor wants to penalise those in that 10 per cent and add further pressures to their everyday cost of living for simply having the temerity to own a camper trailer, then they need to be upfront with them.

I read with interest the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries' submission to the inquiry into this bill. The study that the FCAI commissioned found that, if a 100 per cent battery electric mandate were to be put in place by 2030, an entry level car would go up by $12,500, and Australian drivers after a mid-sized SUV would need to increase their budget by $10,000.

Now to some science and facts. You don't need to like these facts, but they are constrained by the laws of physics. There is no development of the laws of physics. They are what they are. We can try to master them, but we can't defy them.

So what disturbs me in the EV and broader climate change debate is that there is a real, significant lack of scientific literacy and realistic projections. Current generation lithium iron phosphate batteries have a gravimetric energy density of approximately 150 watt-hours per kilogram. Now, diesel and petrol have a gravimetric energy density of 12,700 watt-hours per kilogram—nearly 85 times the weight.

Now, granted: EVs use their stored energy more efficiently than do internal combustion engine vehicles. Think of the wasted heat that radiates from an internal combustion engine car. An EV converts about 90 per cent of the energy stored in the battery into motion, whereas an ICE vehicle only converts about 20 per cent of its energy into motion and the rest is wasted as heat and through other mechanical losses.

But the issue here is the weight and mass of the battery. In order to get the payload capability in an EV equivalent to an ICE vehicle, you need a battery that weighs about 60 times the weight of the fuel that would otherwise be stored in the vehicle's fuel tank. Why is this important? A small-to-medium battery EV practically makes perfect sense for people who are just commuting around the city. A model 3 Tesla has a 60 kilowatt-hour battery. This battery weighs 460 kilograms. EVs bigger than this really start to become impractical and, arguably, economically irrational.

Take, for example, the F-150 Lightning dual cab, which you can currently only buy in the USA. This big American truck is super impressive. I'd love to drive one; I reckon it would be really exciting. The big problem is that the battery weighs 817 kilograms. Even with this enormous battery, the standard-range F-150 Lightning is only equivalent to that from 18 litres of fuel. This means that the range is severely limited, especially if you load it up—let alone hooking up a trailer, boat or caravan to it. Anyone who has ever towed anything marginally heavy will know that as soon as you hook it up your range is more than halved.

Case studies in the US have demonstrated that the real-world range capability of an F-150 Lightning, when loaded up, is about 100 kilometres. Imagine driving from Perth to Exmouth: 13 times on the trip you would have to pull over for three hours, and that is assuming that you've got a fast charger at the roadhouse. It's simply not going to be possible. To get the range capability of a diesel powered vehicle, you would need a battery nearly four times the size of the one that is currently in the F-150 Lightning. This is completely unworkable. It would be ridiculously expensive, would weigh too much and wouldn't even fit within the form factor of the vehicle itself. Imagine the extra wear and tear on the road, the safety implications if you had an accident and the extra wear and tear on the tyres and brakes—not to mention the insane amount of raw material required to make these batteries.

As I said, small-to-medium electric vehicles make sense. They don't have to carry a big payload and, for the most part, if they're used in and around town, their batteries can be topped up overnight. But four-wheel drive SUV and ute EVs don't make a lot of sense, unless of course you don't intend to go big distances using their payload capacity.

Some may say that battery and charging technology will improve. I've been looking into this and I'm disappointed to have to tell them that there is nothing, even on the periphery of battery science development, that promises to increase the energy density by a factor that makes them a practical replacement for a larger vehicle. This is why, for now, a hybrid actually makes sense. Let's face it: most owners of dual cabs and four-wheel drives are not loading them up or towing over big distances for 365 days of the year. So having a small battery which will cover the short commutes and be recharged daily, backed up by a small internal combustion engine for those occasional longer and loaded-up drives, makes sense over the short-to-medium term. Why is this an issue? The latest figures from the Australia Chamber of Automotive Industries show that the biggest-selling vehicles are dual cabs and four-wheel drives. These are the vehicles that Australians want, and someone actually needs to be upfront with them if Australians are to be expected to change their buying habits.

I note the amendment proposed by others to sunset the inclusion of plug-in hybrids in this FBT-exemption bill. While the coalition doesn't support the bill—because we don't believe in just providing subsidies to the wealthy to enable them to buy electric vehicles while poorer people or those on lower incomes, particularly in the outer suburbs and regional areas, won't be able to afford it—I have to say that this amendment is actually sending the wrong message. If the purposes of this bill are to increase the uptake of EVs and get high-emissions vehicles off the road, then ensuring that hybrids are off the road, that they're not going to be part of this, is sending the wrong message. It doesn't actually deal with the reality, particularly the uniquely Australian reality. The most popular vehicle in Europe—I can't remember the name of the car—is basically the size of a Corolla; it's a small vehicle. Here in Australia, the most popular vehicle is a HiLux and the second most popular is a Ranger. Then we have the RAV4 and, further down the list, the D-MAX. Four of the top 10 best-selling vehicles, by a long way, are four-wheel drives and dual-cab utes. So those opposite are sending the wrong message to people.

A subsidy—make no mistake about it; that's what this is—for electric cars, the owners of which will then fail to contribute to road maintenance by avoiding taxes, is emblematic of this modern Labor party. This is a policy that will achieve no environmental benefit. It will give a tax break to the wealthy, hurt everyday Australians and be widely impractical; in short, it checks all the boxes of the ALP policy handbook. There's no doubt that Australians will adopt EVs.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've bought one—our household has bought one. For my wife, commuting to work, it makes perfect sense. She no longer has to visit a petrol station—she plugs it in every night, and it's absolutely fantastic. I've been driving it, and it's an excellent vehicle. It drives better than any other vehicle I've driven. It's great. But the reality is that for many Australians, who like to recreate and to get out and about in the regions are towing their caravans and their boats, these vehicles might have the capacity to tow. The F1-50 can tow four tons—or possibly even 4½ tons—but if you can tow it for only 100 kilometres, it doesn't suit the Australian lifestyle or landscape.

We have to think more seriously about this. We can't just have policies driven by inner-city MPs, inner-city elites who don't think about it. I had someone recently say to me, 'Maybe they just need to change what type of vehicle they need to buy.' Be upfront with the Australian people that that's what you're expecting them to do! Don't just create these policies that will impose on them without being upfront. Minister Bowen, the member for McMahon, went over to America and took a photo in front of an F1-50 Lightning at a Ford dealership, saying, 'They said we were going to ruin the weekend, but this car can tow big loads'. But guess what? It can tow only 100 kilometres.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Electric Car Discount) Bill 2022. I'll start with a framing of where we're at. We're facing a climate crisis. We turn on the news and see the results of that every day. It's not going to get better. Clearly, Australia has to lift its game when it comes to the transition away from fossil fuels to a clean energy future. Australians are also faced with a cost-of-living crisis where households across the country are having to make really tough decisions, when it comes to their weekly budgets, on what they spend money on.

Electrification is a huge opportunity not only for Australia but also, at a household level, for households to save money. If you look at rooftop solar in Australia, we now have some of the cheapest—if not the cheapest—rooftop solar in the world. Australian households are benefiting from that. They continue to install solar and reap the benefits of lower power bills. That policy started under the Howard government, and has had bipartisan support in developing the certification systems, bringing down the price of installation, and putting into practice the work and amazing innovation of some of our best scientists in Australia to improve the efficient of solar PV cells.

Clearly, Australians want electric vehicles. The demand far outstrips supply. It's no surprise that Australians want electric vehicles. According to the Australian Automobile Association, households spend more than $100 on average per week on fuel. That's more than $5,000 a year every year. The recent restoration of the full fuel excise charge will ensure that prices remain high for petrol and diesel. That money that Australians spend on fuel doesn't stay in Australia. Most of the tens of billions of dollars spent on fuel flows back to oil-producing countries. It's bad not only for the economy but also for our energy security. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has reported that our fuel stockpile has been as low as 20 days in recent years, well below the 90-day requirement set by the International Energy Agency. It's no wonder that Chris Barrie, former Chief of the Defence Force, said that climate change is the greatest threat to our national security. And yet we continue to power our cars with dirty, imported fuel from insecure supply chains, rather than from clean Australian wind and sunshine—sunshine that can be captured on your roof at home and put into your electric vehicle.

The rest of the developed world have seen the writing on the wall and have been shifting to electric vehicles at pace. In Europe, EV sales make up 17 per cent of the market now. In countries like Norway it's as high as 86 per cent. Even in the fuel-hungry United States, electric-vehicle sales now make up more than six per cent of the market. Here in Australia, electric vehicles make up two per cent of the market, at least for the figures we have for last year. Slow adoption of EVs is costing Australians money. It's costing Australians money every time they go to the fuel pump, and it is causing damage to our climate. We have to look at the transition to EVs in the context of climate change. This is something that we have to rapidly speed up.

The bulk of the 18.6 per cent of Australia's total emissions due to transport come from light vehicles. Our cars are highly polluting. The average Australian car is 45 per cent more emissions-intensive than the European equivalent. If we're to reach net zero by 2050, we clearly have to do better and we have to move fast. Research by the Grattan Institute shows that, to get to net zero, EVs need to make up 100 per cent of light vehicle sales by 2035 at the latest.

Australians are ready to make the change. Earlier this month, an NRMA survey showed that 57 per cent of respondents would consider purchasing an EV. But, as we all know, one significant issue is that there is a shortfall in supply. In the ACT, the wait on a Hyundai Kona is now 12 months. Manufacturers like Hyundai don't want to send great numbers of affordable electric vehicles to Australia, because it's currently not an attractive market. Why is that? It's because we continue to see scaremongering and still have poor policy settings that make us a dumping ground for a whole range of inefficient clunkers that we see on the road. Leadership and action is needed to move us from the back of the queue up to the front of the queue when it comes to the electric vehicles.

By far, the biggest issue that we need to deal with to change that is to have fuel efficiency standards. Australia is one of only two OECD countries that do not have fuel efficiency standards. The other country is Russia. In 2014, the Climate Change Authority under the Abbott Government recommended introducing fuel efficiency standards, and modelling shows that the standard would have had a net benefit to the economy of $13.9 billion had that recommendation been implemented by policymakers.

We need to act now. We have an opportunity to act and to start realising this benefit. It's great to see Minister Bowen and the government commit to fuel efficiency standards to drive the change that we need. We need independent, robust and ambitious fuel efficiency standards. We need them to ensure that these standards have integrity. They need to be mandatory to ensure standards apply fairly across different manufacturers, and they must be based on real-world driving patterns. Recent research of SUVs in Sydney shows that actual emissions are up to 65 per cent higher than claimed by manufacturers. Indeed, we've seen in the news over recent history vehicle manufacturers being caught out for fudging the numbers. The same standard should be implemented for all passenger vehicles without exception. Finally, it should be based on and monitored by independent and publicly accessible data. I'll continue to work to encourage the government to move swiftly to bring on these fuel efficiency standards that have integrity, alongside a world-class fuel efficiency standard. The government needs to move quickly to improve EV charging infrastructure across the country. In our cities many people are renting or are in apartment buildings without charging infrastructure. In regional and remote Australia, range anxiety acts as a barrier to the uptake of electric vehicles.

Progress reported.