Australia stuck in slow lane on electric vehicles
January 19, 2020
Sydney Morning Herald
Almost a year ago, a Senate inquiry into electric vehicles recommended the federal government lead the way in promoting the uptake of such vehicles. The committee urged the government to set targets for how many electric vehicles might be on the road decades from now, to develop a national strategy with the states about charging infrastructure and commit to transitioning to battery-powered vehicles for the government fleet.
A few weeks later, the Morrison government unveiled what it called a "Climate Solutions Package", a pitifully inadequate five-point policy that effectively relaunched its earlier Direct Action effort. One of the key points of that initiative was a national strategy for electric vehicles. If evidence were needed of the Coalition's history of deflection and indecisiveness about climate change, it is right there in that vacuous, single-page strategy on electric cars.
Put shortly, there is no strategy. There is no policy, no target and so far little evidence of a plan.
And in the weeks before the May election, the Coalition buckled under the hysterical tripe emanating from some conservative commentators that falsely claimed government policies to reduce emissions and shift to electric vehicles would lead to tradies losing their trusty utes. That was symptomatic of the quality of much of the discussion about climate change last year.
Meanwhile, the devastating and continuing bushfires this season have demonstrated climate change is taking hold. It is long past time for the Morrison government – and governments worldwide – to get real about genuine, practical climate-change strategies.
A simple one would be to focus on vehicle emissions and promoting electric vehicle use, perhaps through tax or other financial incentives. And as consumers we should embrace electric vehicles. The concept that they don't suit Australia because of the long distances is largely a furphy. How many of us actually drive those long distances between cities on a regular basis?
According to the Department of Environment and Energy's June quarter update for Australia's greenhouse emissions, transport represented 18.9 per cent of the nation's overall emissions in 2018-19 – second only to emissions generated by electricity-generating power stations.
And the 2017 National Inventory Report on emissions, submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, noted "transport emissions are one of the strongest source[s] of emissions growth in Australia".
Indeed, the department's June quarterly update (the latest available figures) shows the transport sector has experienced the largest increase in emissions of all sectors in the past three decades – up 63.5 per cent from 1990 to June 2019.
Here is a relatively easy policy for the Morrison government that might shift it from the indolent passivity and obstructionist tactics that have hallmarked its approach to climate change, and position it instead as a front-runner stepping into action.
That is what the world's biggest car manufacturers are already doing. That is also what the world's leading economies are doing: China, South Korea, Germany, France, Britain and individual states in the US, as well as Japan, Norway, the Netherlands and more have set targets and are providing incentives for consumers to switch to electric vehicles.
If Prime Minister Scott Morrison really wants to build credibility around climate change strategies, he should act now to promote the uptake of electric cars. Set a target. Change over the fleet. Stop wavering and do it. And we should overcome any bias we may have against electric vehicles – most of the rest of the world has.
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