Press conference with Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen - Canberra, ACT

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, thanks for coming out, everyone, and thanks for coming early. Today Minister King and I are releasing the National Electric Vehicle Strategy which is a commitment under Powering Australia that the Labor Party made from Opposition which we’re delivering in Government.

And today, importantly, we’re announcing the next steps to give Australians better choices – better choices of the cars they can drive. As you know, around the world 85 per cent of people who buy cars are covered by fuel efficiency standards. The requirement of countries around the world of manufacturers to send to those countries a certain amount of fuel-efficient vehicles – electric vehicles and other fuel-efficient vehicles. Australia and Russia are the only two developed countries without fuel efficiency standards in place or under development. That position should not be allowed to continue.

So as an important part of the National Electric Vehicle Strategy, Minister King and I are committing to the development of fuel efficiency standards for Australia. This is an important step. This is ultimately all about giving Australians better choices – better choices of cars which are better for the climate and better to drive and more cost-efficient. A petrol vehicle on average costs around $2,400 per year to drive; an electric vehicle costs around $400 a year to drive, so a saving of $2,000.

Now, obviously a lot of electric vehicles are at the more expensive end of spectrum at the moment. That is true. But it’s also a result, a direct result, of a lack of policy. Fuel efficiency standards would require more affordable electric vehicles to be sent to Australia. Look at other countries – the United Kingdom, for example – there’s a much bigger range of affordable vehicles, electric vehicles, available for people.

We want people of all walks of life, regardless of where they live, regardless of their income, to have the chance to consider buying an electric vehicle, to weigh it up for their own purposes and best interests, and fuel efficiency standards will play a big role in doing that.

It’s years overdue for Australia. We’ve wasted a decade. We have not now a moment to waste, and so we’re getting on with the job. But, of course, there’ll be a lot of detailed consultation, which Catherine will lead, in terms of the design elements, how they interact with other fuel efficiency standards.

There’s other things, of course, in here. We’re getting on with the job of Driving the Nation, our policy of rolling out electric vehicle chargers once every 150 kilometres on a national highway. There’s other things that we are getting on with the job to do, of course. But fuel efficiency standards are an important step forward for our country, and today we’re committing the Albanese Government to developing them and to doing more work over the course of this year to make them a reality.

I’m going to ask, obviously, Catherine to add from her perspective to this important announcement, and then we’ll take questions.

CATHERINE KING: Thanks very much for that, Chris. And it’s great, you can see the sort of – some of the range of vehicles that are available now in Australia, but really what this is about is making more electric vehicles available, making sure that we’re not the last country that all of the car manufacturers choose to send their electric vehicles but that we’re among the first countries that people – that car manufacturers send.

The Electric Vehicle Strategy of course we have now agreed. I think we got over – I don’t know – 5,000 submissions it felt like for the need for fuel efficiency standards. And that is part of the work that I am doing.

Fuel efficiency standards you will find at www.cleanercars.gov.au. There is a consultation paper that was launched today and a six-week consultation period to develop fuel efficiency standards for this country. They are long overdue. As Chris said, we’re the only other country other than Russia that does not have them, and that puts us at a significant disadvantage when we’re trying to get more electric vehicles here available in this country.

What fuel efficiency standards don’t do is they don’t mandate that you have to get rid of your ute, they don’t mandate that you have to get rid of your diesel car. They don’t mandate the sort of car that you have. What they do is they provide an incentive for car manufacturers to send their latest and cleanest vehicles here into Australia. And we know the demand for electric vehicles has been increasing substantially, but the real problem at the moment is absolutely supply. People are waiting a long time to get access to their vehicles, and the range of vehicles that are available for them is just not there.

So as a proud country Victorian, someone who drives a huge amounts on our roads, I want country people to have the choice. I want country people to have the opportunity of the fuel savings that electric vehicles bring. And this is really what this Electric Vehicle Strategy is about – making sure we’re rolling out the charging infrastructure, we’re providing that opportunity, making sure that we’ve got incentives in place for people to be able to get electric vehicles, but making sure that we’ve actually got the choice here in this country of the range of electric vehicles that other countries have.

Chris and I have happy to take questions, but I also thank the FCAI and the EV Council for coming to the press conference today. And I’m sure they’ll have some things to say to media afterwards. But thank you. Over to you.

JOURNALIST: Minister Bowen, just to confirm a couple of details quickly: will that fuel efficiency standards be mandatory across all sales of passenger vehicles. When will they come in? And just as importantly, could you indicate what sort of ambition you have for the emissions cuts in passenger vehicles for their contribution to the national climate target?

CATHERINE KING: So you’ll see – so I have carriage of the fuel efficiency standards – so you will see in the consultation paper that comes out today we haven’t set any of that. We have – literally it is consultation paper that needs to look at what are the CO2 standards, what is the timing of this, what is the trajectory - do you go hard and fast or do you go slowly build up to that trajectory – what are the debits and credits that are included in that? So the consultation paper really is the process by which we will land what fuel efficiency standards will be. But they will not be voluntary; they will be mandatory. That is the process.

You know, we’ve got a voluntary code at the moment that, you know, has been operating for some time. The fact that we’ve got the car dealers here, represented here, they are wanting a mandatory code, and that is really what this fuel efficiency standard is about. The consultation will contain all of that, and we haven’t landed all of that yet. But obviously there’s a lot of work to do.

JOURNALIST: Is there a target for the uptake of EVs that you would like to see? I mean, obviously [indistinct] very quickly, and also it is incentives only to get there or is it penalties or disincentives involved as well?

CHRIS BOWEN: There’s no target; we want Australians to have better choices. We want Australians who are making their own decisions to have better options that aren’t available to them today which consumers in other countries do have.

In terms of how a fuel efficiency standard works, again, as Catherine said, there’s a lot of consultation in the paper. But it’s a requirement on producers of manufacturers to send a range of vehicles to Australia which they’re not currently send to Australia. Chief executives of car companies have said to me, “We can’t convince the boards in Tokyo and Berlin and Detroit to send fuel efficient vehicles to Australia when you don’t require us to when every other country, every other key market in the world does require it.” That makes sense to us.

So we’ve listened to the car manufacturers. We’ve listened to the broad coalition now – the broad coalition – that argues for fuel efficiency standards. And, as Catherine said, we will work through those details.

JOURNALIST: When you’re talking about incentives, just run us through that. And does this also include incentives for local governments to roll out infrastructure so we can charge the things?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, in terms of incentives, of course we’ve already passed our electric vehicle tax cut, which has played no small part in the uptake of electric vehicles – 2 per cent when we came to office 11 months ago and 7 per cent now. That’s a pretty big jump in a relatively short period of time. And our tax cut isn’t the only reason for that jump, but it’s no small part of the reason for that jump. And, of course, states and territories have their own incentives for EV take-up, which we welcome, and you put them together with our tax cut and it becomes a material incentive.

In terms of how the fuel efficiency standards work, as Catherine indicated, if you look at fuel efficiency standards around the world there are various credits, there are various opportunities for people to bring certain electric vehicles into the market and receive incentive as part of fuel efficiency standards to do so. But that’s what we’ll work through in consultation. That’s the way we do business in the Albanese government. The safeguards reform, for example – three rounds of consultation, hundreds and hundreds of submissions, lots of roundtables. We do it fast but we do it right.

JOURNALIST: How soon do you expect the fuel efficiency standards to take effect? And how is this consultation process different to the one last year? Because it sounds quite similar.

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, so the consultation last year was about whether we should have a fuel efficiency standard in Australia. And this is now about the technical detail of what does that look like. The consultation period will last for six weeks, so open today at www.cleanercars.gov.au, so I encourage you to have a look at that. And then our plan is to have an exposure draft of the legislation ready at least by the end of the year. My preference would be to have it introduced by the end of the year, but it is going to depend on how technical or how some of those technical issues are dealt with within my department, and they can take a little bit of time. But our intention is to do that.

In terms of the start time, that is one of the issues that we’re consulting over – when should it start, when is the most important. And you know, frankly, we’re a decade behind where we should be now already. Like, we really want to get this thing done, but we also don’t want to provide – you know, we don’t want to do something that the car dealers just basically – or car manufacturers can’t meet either.

JOURNALIST: Would next year be possible, or is it a several years sort of process do you think?

CATHERINE KING: Certainly in terms of getting legislation through the parliament – and, of course, I have to do that, legislation is required for this – you know, that would be by next year. Definitely it will be by next year.

JOURNALIST: There was a two-year trial for EVs for your COMCARs. So how is that going? Have any contracts been signed for the EVs for Comcars? What kind of models are you going to be driving around in?

CHRIS BOWEN: There have been various trials of EVs in Comcars which have gone well. But, of course, our election commitment is 75 per cent of Comcars – commonwealth fleet, not just Comcars but across the entire Australian government excluding Defence – will be 75 per cent no emissions by 2025, and that’s what we’re working to achieve and that is the policy.

JOURNALIST: So no contracts have been signed?

CHRIS BOWEN: There have been – well, Comcar makes its own contracts, but they’ll comply with the government policy, of course, of 75 per cent by 2025.

JOURNALIST: Australia is the last mover here, as you said, bar Russia. Have you had any analysis or will you do any analysis of how hard – like, to calibrate the policy how hard Australia will have to work to incentivise the car makes to send a decent range of models here and quantities of volumes to get a competitive market going?

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, and that really is why it’s so important to do the consultation. You know, we can have lots of, you know, technical people working on how, you know, the CO2 emissions work, but if we can’t get car manufacturers to send them to our dealers, then it’s problematic. So that’s really what this consultation about, is trying to make sure we actually set the – get the right settings to actually ensure we can actually drive change here. This is all about trying to provide better choices for Australians in terms of electric vehicles. We should have a range of models at a range of price points, and that is not what we’ve got currently.

We know this technology is developing so fast. We’re seeing more and more – more and more car manufacturers, you know, new cars coming out all the time, and we are just not getting them here in this country, and it’s ridiculous, frankly. And it’s not, you know, just about emissions; it is about choice, but it’s also about savings. I mean, the fact that if you live in my hometown of Ballarat and, you know, the huge savings that you could have by not having to fill up with petrol all of the time, like, it’s really significant. We know that country people, we have more cars and we drive more. It is massive savings for regional Australians.

We’ve got to get the charging infrastructure right and deal with those issues around range anxiety and deal with issues as models come into the market around, you know, utes and towing and all of those things, and that’s – you know, that’s happening. But, really, this is about choice, and it’s really important, particularly for regional people who spend – we spend more on fuel and more time in our cars.

JOURNALIST: Just a basic one on the cost, it sounds like there isn’t any new money for EV incentives or further charging infrastructure beyond what you’ve already announced. Could you talk to the budgetary impact of the strategy you’re outlining today? Is it budget neutral beyond, I guess the cost of the fuel exercise you’re giving up?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, we’ve already made substantial commitments which are already reflected in budget – Driving the Nation. I’ll have more to say about ARENA funding for charging very soon as part of a series of announcements we’ll be making in relation to electric vehicles. But we’re getting on with the job.

I mean, we’ve got an election commitment to provide a fast charger once every 150 kilometres. That’s a significant commitment. Our first responsibility is to implement that and then, of course, we’ll add appropriately through ARENA and other grants. But fuel efficiency standards don’t have a budgetary impact.

JOURNALIST: Just on a related matter, the decline in fuel excise and the rise in electric vehicles, Victorian and other states are moving to road user charges. Most tax economists think that’s a good idea. Why is the Commonwealth challenging what Victoria is doing there? Are you actually going to do it yourselves do the heavy lifting in that area?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, there’s constitutional precedents at play which have led the Attorney General to intervene in that case. We haven’t instigated the challenge, but we are represented, as is appropriate, and that’s the normal precedent for constitutional matters – for the Commonwealth and the Attorney-General to be represented. That’s pretty standard.

The document makes clear that we think more modelling and work needs to be done on the implications, and we’ll continue to do and we’ll continue to do that in partnership with our states and territory colleagues.

Anything else?

CATHERINE KING: Thank you.

CHRIS BOWEN: Great, thanks.