Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I also want to speak in support of this amendment. Obviously, the whole aim of this legislation is to reduce emissions from our vehicles and to shift to zero-carbon vehicles. As I said in my second reading speech, this is what we need to be doing so that our carbon pollution from transport can be reduced as much as it can be in as quick a time as possible. Including plug-in electric vehicles in this scheme was just going to continue—and not just continue but subsidise—vehicles which have ongoing and substantial use of fossil fuels. A report was done just this year by the International Council on Clean Transportation which showed that the use of petrol or diesel in plug-in hybrids is actually much greater than what the manufacturers claim. Rather than claim fuel consumption of about 1.6 litres per 100 kilometres, the real-world experience across Europe is that as these cars are being driven they're actually being driven on their petrol motor a lot more and ending up with fuel consumption of around four litres per 100 kilometres. So they are, in fact, a fossil fuel vehicle and certainly are not deserving of subsidies. Essentially, if we included plug-in hybrids in this legislation, it would be yet another ongoing subsidy for fossil fuels, which is the last thing we need when we should be doing everything we can to tackle our climate crisis.

We thought coming to the position of phasing out plug-in hybrid vehicles out of this scheme over three years was a reasonable compromise. Clearly, we do have an issue at the moment of a lack of supply of electric vehicles. The previous government was so recalcitrant and did nothing to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles that the vehicle manufacturers just said, 'Why would we bring electric vehicles to Australia?' It just has not been a good market for them. We know that for anybody wanting to buy a new electric vehicle at the moment, the wait time is six to 12 months. So we do have an issue with supply.

We are allowing plug-in hybrids to be included in the scheme, to encourage their uptake for the next three years. They do, at least, produce lower emissions in general, but it's not something you'd want to continue for any longer than those three years. We really need to shift to zero-carbon vehicles as quickly as possible. We know that the world is facing climate catastrophe. We know that we have to reduce our carbon pollution by at least 75 per cent by 2030, otherwise the consequences are extremely dire. We think we've got problems with floods and fires at the moment—and that's after just over one degree of global warning—but we are headed for three degrees of global warming. We absolutely need to drastically reduce our carbon emissions as quickly as possible.

We need to shift to getting a zero-carbon fleet as soon as possible. We know that cars that are purchased today have a lifetime of 10, 15 or 20 years, so it is important to get all the support for 100 per cent completely renewable, zero-carbon vehicles as soon as possible and not to prolong the use of fossil fuel vehicles in any way for any longer than is necessary.