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

With only three minutes, I really don't have time to do justice to the topic of this urgency motion on climate change, so I'll restrict my comments to electric vehicles. It's been almost three years since the Prime Minister promised us an electric vehicle strategy. Instead, we've got a future fuels strategy, which states:

The government will continue to partner with industry to invest in enabling battery charging and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure for road transport to give Australian consumers and business confidence to purchase low emission vehicles that work for them.

That's all we've got.

It fails to recognise that the way to give consumers and business confidence is to publish a policy which has objectives and which has time lines. We need to consider things like infrastructure—a national EV charging network, for example. We did see one of those go into the infrastructure plan in February 2019, where it's languished ever since, waiting to identify a proponent let alone implement it.

Some progress has been made on EV charging, but not because of some careful planning. Are fuel cell vehicles part of the solution? If that's the case, we need to be talking about hydrogen refuelling stations. We need standards, we need codes, we need regulations for fuel and emissions, and for buildings—having electric charging points in apartment buildings. None of that's there. In terms of vehicle type and investment, there's a substantial difference between purchasing and depreciating a car compared to a train, and businesses must factor that in.

Businesses need clear guidance. They've said that the current government strategy proposes changes. That's a polite way of saying it's rubbish. The lack of national regulations leaves consumers and industry subject to a 'patchwork of disparate regulations'. It's like the rail gauge fiasco of narrow-, standard- and broad-gauge railways. Nissan Australia's managing director was quite clear. He said:

… the most important role governments can play is to provide clear direction to the market on what the short, mid- and long-term objectives should be. This provides direction to industry across auto, energy and infrastructure sectors, provides certainty for investment and most importantly provides clear direction to consumers.

Industry and businesses are seeking stability. The Australian people are seeking clarity, yet we don't have that. Leaders are those that define the future, and we have an absence of leadership in relation to this government and electric vehicles.