Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator McKenzie, I move:

That the Senate expresses its concern at the Albanese Labor Government's announced family car and ute tax that will drive up the cost of new cars by up to $25,000 and the cost of living for not only the people of Dunkley, but all Australians.

It is a shocking indictment of the government that they have constantly told us they're going to do something about the cost of living, do something about the pressures that Australians face, yet they continue to simply bring in more and more taxes on the Australian people. One of the most pernicious ones they are introducing at the moment is a new car tax, a new tax and credit scheme that will apply to the purchasers of all cars in this country, which the car industry themselves say will push up car prices in Australia by thousands of dollars, indeed tens of thousands of dollars, for some of the most popular cars sold in this country. Why is it that the government, who say they are focused on the cost of living, are imposing this unnecessary, aggressive reduction in emission limits for Australian cars which will only make things harder for Australian families?

I will take a little time to explain to people what the government is proposing here. They are proposing that new limits be set for the carbon dioxide emissions that come out the tailpipes, they say, of cars sold in this country. They want to reduce those limits by just over 60 per cent over the next five years alone. This is the world's most aggressive emission-limit program that has ever been introduced. The government constantly say, 'The United States has a program like this, and there hasn't been a big impact on the availability of cars or the price of cars there, so there won't be here.' But the devil, of course, is going to be in the detail. It's not enough just to point to another country and say, 'They have a scheme that's similar to ours, and therefore our scheme will be fine.' What if your scheme is much more stringent than theirs? What if the penalties for breaching that scheme are much higher? What happens then?

That's where we have to go to the detail which the government are refusing to release. They've refused an order of this chamber to produce the modelling behind the scheme. They're refusing to go through any of the details and respond to the industry's claims with any form of detail. Their ministers don't seem to be across the actual calculations that are behind the industry estimates. So it is important to go through some of those calculations, which are actually quite simple and not hard to explain. But the government won't even engage on that level of detail.

One of the most popular cars sold in Australia last year—I think it was the second most popular last year—was the Toyota HiLux. A lot of people buy a Toyota HiLux as a family vehicle these days. It has a tray in the back, but you can fit a family of four in there as well—and, of course, a lot of tradespeople have to use these vehicles just to do their jobs. That vehicle, the Toyota HiLux, emits 188 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre. The government wants to reduce these limits by about 60 per cent. After five years, by 2029, the prescribed limit will be 81 grams per kilometre for the Toyota HiLux. That Toyota HiLux will therefore be 107 grams over the limit, and the government wants to apply a penalty of $100 per gram. It's very simple: 107 times $100 is $10,700. A $10,700 cost will be imposed on the second most popular car in this country.

The government says there's a similar scheme in the US. But, if you actually look at the US scheme, which I don't know whether the government has done, the US scheme is not actually based on carbon emissions. The efficiency measure is based on gallons per mile—but we'll leave that to one side. The US scheme over the last five years—the same time frame the government wants—has reduced efficiency limits by only 25 per cent. That is half of what the government is proposing to do. So this scheme is already twice as aggressive as what the US has. On top of that, the fine that has been applied in the US scheme is a third of that A$100 fine in equivalent terms. We're proposing a scheme that doubles the efficiency obligations on car manufacturers and penalises them triple what they have to pay if they exceed those limits. No wonder our local industry is concerned. No wonder Toyota themselves came out yesterday and expressed serious concerns about the availability and price impacts this will have on the Australian vehicle market.

We must remember, of course, that we are a relatively small market here in this country. Some manufacturers simply may not supply cars if there is such a price impact to doing so. They might not be able to sell them if they have to charge an extra $10,000. We learnt this week as well that Ford were actually considering pulling out of Australia when they ceased manufacturing vehicles here. That was not because of any tax scheme but simply because we were a small market and they thought it might not be worth their while to bother being in this country. We've got to be a bit careful here in thinking that we are somehow protected from the competitive pressures that occur around the world. If we impose this kind of scheme without getting across the detail, there may be really perverse impacts on Australian families and Australian businesses who need these vehicles to do their jobs.

When these figures were put to the government in Senate estimates, they did not dispute the figures themselves. They simply said that car manufacturers would adjust the cars they put up for sale. Those are the words of the departmental officials: they will adjust the cars that are available for sale. That means that the Australian people will have to adjust the cars they buy. This is a scheme which will tell Australians what cars they can buy and what cars they can drive around in. For some businesses, this scheme will limit their ability to go about their job, to earn a living for their family, because there simply aren't the cars available that have emissions below these limits.

There are no battery vehicles that can replace a car like the Ford Ranger in a usable way right now. There are some vehicles in the US that are trying to do this, some utes like the Ford F-150 Lightning. They're being pulled off the market right now. The demand in the US has not been strong. Ford are actually losing thousands of dollars per vehicle sold. They lost A$4.5 billion selling the Ford F-150 Lightning over the last couple of years. In New Zealand, these vehicles have been taken off the market completely. There is not a market for them. The market is not ready and the technology is not ready. There's no point in our country going too far beyond this and imposing an unnecessary cost on the Australian people.

You've got to wonder why the government are doing this. Why are they doing this? There seems to be a level of cultural cringe against people who just want to drive a big vehicle in this country. As I said, some people have to do it, but other families just choose to. They want a big vehicle for the safety aspects, for large families, to be able to use a ute on their weekends to clear their gardens, and to do basic things in life. Maybe they'll sometimes tow a caravan or a horse float to enjoy the wonderful country we live in and the opportunities it provides the people who live here. This is a tax that could fundamentally change the Australian way of life. We have a way of life that allows us to enjoy the outdoors, to go off-road or go and drive on the beach where I am. Lots of people love to go up to Five Mile Beach and drive along there. That won't be possible in an EV. You've got to drive a long way to get there. You could get bogged. You could get stranded. You don't want to do it in an EV. People need a car to do that, to enjoy themselves. What is wrong with that?

Of course, none of this in and of itself is going to save the planet; indeed, this scheme is so naive and flawed that it looks only at so-called tailpipe emissions. It penalises only vehicles that have high carbon emissions out of the tailpipe. It doesn't factor in the fact that electric vehicles have a lot more carbon emissions in their construction. A report by Volvo just a few years ago showed that in our type of electricity system, which is still dominated by fossil fuels, you would have to drive an electric car charged in our system for about 10 years before it would become carbon positive, compared to its equivalent internal combustion vehicle. In all likelihood, then, promoting electric vehicles while we have a fossil fuel system will actually increase carbon emissions, not decrease them, because most people don't hold on to their cars for 10 years or more. It is completely and utterly absurd.

The government have clearly not done the work for this scheme. They have not taken the time or had the diligence to sit down and go through the figures properly. This belies their promise that, somehow, they are focused on the cost-of-living pressures facing Australians. They must go back to the drawing board. The Biden administration is doing that. It is true—I'll give the government their due—that the Biden administration had proposed to cut its emission limits by an amount similar to what the government has chosen for the next five years. That's not in recent times, so you can't use the evidence of the US today to judge its impact, but in the future the Biden administration was going to do something similar. That was the government's justification for their limits. The problem with the government's argument is that, since they announced this policy, the Biden administration have backed down. They're going to withdraw that particular regulation. They're doing so because manufacturers in the US raised issues, just as manufacturers here in Australia are doing, and the Biden administration have listened to the manufacturers in the US and changed tack.

The government must do the same here. If they don't, it is clear they do not actually care about Australians' cost of living. They are simply on an obsessive pursuit to chase Greens preferences and to try to single-handedly change the temperature of the globe. It will be only the Australian people who suffer if they continue on this obsessive route.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This Labor government is maintaining the tradition of Labor governments: taxing and spending, taxing and spending. In the last few weeks, the government has revealed plans to tax clothing in the name of saving the environment and to tax food in the name of funding Australia's world-leading biosecurity. I would have thought protecting Australia's biosecurity, which underpins $100 billion in export earnings, was the responsibility of the whole country, considering the wealth it bestows on all Australians. I would consider funding biosecurity to be important to protecting the supply of food we all eat, but, no, this government wants to tax farmers off the land to make way for its billionaire mates' Frankenstein foods. It doesn't matter that Australians don't want to eat bugs or fake meat cultured and then grown in bioreactors. This attack on Australia's health and nutrition is happening because this government's owners demand for themselves the wealth currently in the hands of our farming communities. They want to transfer the land and the wealth from our farmers to their billionaire parasitic friends.

When the billionaires that try to run the world say, 'You'll own nothing and be happy,' amongst the things the public will no longer own is a car. Chris Bowen MP and his ministry of misery have announced fuel emission standards are being applied to new cars from 2030. 'Increased fuel emission standards', 'tougher fuel emission standards'—it sounds innocuous until you read the fine print, and I thank the opposition for crunching the numbers. Utes will go up by between $2,000 and $6,000 each. At a time when the government need as many tradies as they can find to build as many homes as they can, the government think it's a smart move to add a new tax on tradies, raising the cost of houses and decreasing the supply of houses. What a bloody stupid idea!

More troubling is the increasing cost of passenger cars to Australian families. The Outlander from Mitsubishi—that's a family SUV—will go up by $4,000. LandCruisers, owned by every second family in the bush, will go up by $13,000 each. That's yet another attack on the bush from a government happy to harm the bush in order to win votes back from the teals in the city. This will not be the only price increase in cars. The materials needed for our suicidal net zero measures have much in common with materials used in making cars. The increase in demand from net zero means that these materials are getting scarcer and scarcer and much more expensive. A family car is likely to rise in price by $10,000 within five years in today's dollars because of this materials inflation. Then add Minister Bowen's car tax, and you can see where this is all going.

For those who still haven't worked it out, the New South Wales government has just announced Australia's first 30-minute city, surrounding the new Badgerys Creek airport. It's called Bradfield City. It will be 'cybersmart and digitally led'. That means digital surveillance on everyone. It's happening in London already, and in other countries, with commercial and community facilities including retail, cultural facilities and work all in the one suburb. So you don't have choice of where you work; you work nearby. Plans for Bradfield City include car-free streets. No matter the weather, you will walk everywhere.

On the way to net zero the cost of driving will be artificially increased to raise costs, thanks to this government. That would dramatically increase the cost of living for everyone in this country, increase food prices for everyone in this country and ultimately lead to, in 2030, the very act of driving being an act of civil disobedience. It's all about wealth transfer to their parasitic billionaire friends and about control.

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

We've heard significant detail of the new tax on heavy vehicles, on four-by-fours, on SUVs and on utes, and we've heard about some of the impacts that will have. I want to go through a comparison, but first I want to take you to where my heart lies, and that's in the bush. Utes and four-by-fours are the tools of the trade in the bush; they're not an optional extra. You need a ute; you need a four-by-four. You need it if you're in the mining industry. You need it if you're in the agricultural industry. So, these harmless sounding national vehicle emission standards—'Oh, we're just making fuel emission standards a bit tighter so efficiency improves'—are actually a direct cost on our farmers, on our mining industries, on our tradies, on anyone who needs a four-by-four or a ute for their livelihoods.

So why are we doing this? This is very clearly a form of nudge economics. This is a form of behavioural economics. The government, because of their particular view of the world, are trying to change people's behaviour. Let me give you an example of the way this economic coercion will work—economic coercion using these fuel efficiency standards to force Australian families into particular choices. Let's compare two cars, a Tesla Model 3—around $62,000—and a Prado, a very popular car in Australia, out in the bush as well as in the cities, because people want to fit their family in a car; they want to be able to tow a caravan on the weekends and they want to be able to go off road occasionally. The Prado has a sticker price of $63,000. So you've got two cars with prices within $1,000 of each other. What will these national vehicle emission standards do to the prices of those cars, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries? The government have hidden their modelling. They won't tell us what they think the impact will be, so the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries have had to do their own modelling. When they ran the government's proposal through their model they discovered that the price of the Tesla Model 3 will drop by $15,000 and the price of the Toyota Prado will go up by $4,000 to $5,000—a $20,000 differential. So, if you're a family with three kids who likes to get away on the weekend, suddenly you are faced with a $20,000 price differential between the car you would like—the Prado—and the Tesla.

I've got nothing against electric cars—fabulous technology, and if you're just based in the city, a perfectly good choice, and a lot of people make that choice for themselves. But this is economic coercion from the government to force them into that choice: a $20,000 effective penalty if they choose the Toyota Prado over the Tesla. This is not the way our governments should operate. This will affect tradies, farmers and people in the mining industry, but it will also affect mums and dads and families who just want to tow a caravan on the weekend and get away or go offroad. This is not a fair proposal, and it should be shelved immediately.

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

The issue with the obsession of Prime Minister Albanese, Minister Bowen and Minister Catherine King with fuel efficiency standards is that they are not in any way equivalent to the comparable international markets. The pace and the time frame are not the same. It's very easy for the government to stand up here and say, 'Every other country in the world, except Russia, have fuel efficiency standards,' but it's not the title on top of the page of the policy that matters; it's the detail underneath it.

When we're comparing ourselves with other countries, it's actually not an apples-versus-apples comparison. For example, we're told the USA have got exactly the same policy that we're implementing here. That's just not true. It's laughable; it's an absolute load of hogwash. Just because you put the same heading on the top of the policy, it's not the same—certainly, when you look at the detail. For example, the USA's fuel efficiency standards and their supporting policies are different to the ones that the Albanese government is seeking to impose. Firstly, the time frames are not consistent. The US are progressing at a much slower pace than the time frames Minister Bowen and Minister King are imposing. To put it in simple terms, we're attempting to climb three-quarters of the way up Mount Everest, whereas the US are merely trying to get to base camp. So it's just not equivalent. Secondly, the US, through their Inflation Reduction    Act, are pouring billions of dollars into subsidies for battery manufacturing and direct subsidies for the consumer that come off the purchase price of the vehicle, and that's not what this policy is in any way proposing either.

The biggest issue that the manufacturers have with the government's plan is the speed of the introduction. It is true that the vehicle industry is saying that we should have fuel efficiency standards. But it's the pace at which they are being implemented by this government that is the biggest problem the industry has, because it is going to drive up the cost for consumers. It's going to drive away the choice, as Senator Brockman was just saying, for consumers—people who actually want or need to have a dual cab, a big van or a vehicle that would enable them to do their job or those with lifestyle preferences who want to be able to hook up the caravan or the boat and go on that big drive. I'm from Western Australia, and the drives are very long and large over there. It is not like Canberra, where the coast is just there. The places you've got to go to—I try to get up to Exmouth as often as I can each year in July, and it's a 13-hour drive. It's a long way.

The problem is the pace and the cost that is going to be imposed on people who still want to be able to buy the HiLux, Ranger, LandCruiser or the Patrol. For some, it's going to be $6,000 more, and, if you're wanting an even bigger vehicle like the LandCruiser or the Patrol, we're talking up to $13,000 more that's going to be added to the cost of them and their choice. This policy has been designed with an inner-city mindset, where you don't have to travel the big distances or carry the heavy loads. The rest of Australia who either work with their hands and their heavy tools or enjoy the lifestyle benefits of an SUV or ute are going to be significantly impacted by the tax on their choice. It's their choice, and we are wanting to take that away.

The reason the manufacturers are saying that it is not possible to fit within the time frames is that the technology is not there. I'm sick and tired of hearing frankly ignorant statements from people who don't actually understand the science. They say, 'Oh, it is just a matter of time.' I had someone only recently tell me: 'Hang on, Matt, it's just like how we went from 3G to 4G to 5G mobile phone technology. There's just this innovation, and of course that's what's going to be applied to motor vehicles.' The problem with that argument—it's just not a comparison at all—is that that is mastering the use of radio spectrum. I don't know if anyone realises this, but radio spectrum doesn't weigh anything. There's no mass to it. What we're talking about with motor vehicles is, of course, the fact that they're heavy, and batteries are extremely heavy.

The F-150 Lightning, the big American truck, which isn't actually selling that well in America, I've got to say, has a nearly 900-kilo battery in it, and that's storing about 120 kilowatt hours of electricity, which takes about three hours to recharge on a charger. There are some fast chargers around that might do it a little bit more quickly. You might get that down to about a half an hour if you're on a really fast charger. So it's really impractical. The equivalent, if you compared it with an ICE vehicle, is about 18 litres of fuel—petrol or diesel. So you've got this 900-kilo battery that is equivalent to 18 litres of fuel. It's not a direct one-to-one comparison but I think it's about 16 kilos of fuel, and then you've got the weight of the fuel tank and all that. So we're talking about 18 to 20 kilos compared to 900 kilos. It is just not practical.

The other problem is that they say, 'But battery technology will improve.' What we're talking about is a tenfold increase that would be required. As I said, it takes half an hour on a really fast charger, and I'm talking about when you've got the power station right there and the interconnector right there that you're able to connect onto. It takes about half an hour to charge that vehicle. On a standard charger, such as a 50-kilowatt charger, it's about a three-hour charge. So imagine driving to Exmouth. Senator Smith knows where that is. That's a 1,300-kilometre drive from Perth. You only get a 100-kilometre range with these vehicles when you're towing. Imagine having to pull over for three hours after every hour. That would ruin your weekend. A trip of a couple of weeks up to Exmouth would turn into a couple of months. How ridiculous!

The problem is that there's nothing on the periphery of battery science that gets us there. Even if you were to improve the energy density of a battery to the point where it became equivalent, you would turn that three-hour charge into a 30-hour charge, because that's what you'd actually have to bring yourself to to get that equivalence. It's just insane. I don't know if you realise this but a unit of electricity is a unit of electricity, just like a kilo is a kilo and a litre of water is a litre of water. You can't shrink a litre of water. There's no advancement in technology that can shrink it, and you can't shrink a kilowatt hour of electricity, because those electrons are electrons. There's no adjustment of that through the advancement of technology. If you're going to charge up a 500- or 600-watt hour battery, which doesn't exist and isn't even in the pipeline of existing, you would probably need to have one of our nuclear power stations right next door to the petrol station so that you could actually have enough chargers right there to be able to have the throughput of vehicles at any time.

We know that it's not actually practical, and I defy anyone here in this place or anywhere else to challenge what I'm saying that it's rubbish, and I'm telling you that this is just science. It is just reality, and there is a detachment from reality in what the government is proposing. If you are a tradie and you use your hands or you use heavy tools for your job, you've got to carry heavy weights. My mate is a plumber. When he bought his van he told me that he drove it around without any tools or things in the back of it. He drove it around for a while and he was getting about 11 litres per 100 kilometres in that car. As soon as he put the roof rack on, put the tools in the back and put his drain machine in there, all of a sudden it turned into an average consumption of about 20 litres per 100 kilometres. It's just the laws of physics: when you carry heavy stuff, it takes more energy to move it. That's the reality here.

But this policy is void of any reality. All you're doing is detaching Australians from choice and taxing them. You're taxing their choice. Australians want to be able to go about their business without the interference of government, and government is getting in the way of people's choices, whether it's their job or their lifestyle, and it just can't continue. Please, government, go back to the drawing board and fix this up. You're sending the bejesus up people. People want to be able to be backed up in their choices.