Transcript - TV interview - ABC News 24, Afternoon Briefing with Greg Jennett

GREG JENNETT [HOST]: Catherine King, welcome to the studio. You’re up and running on yet another round of consultation, but this will be pretty brief on EVs, and you’ve spoken about a timeline here. Just to remind our audience, by when do you want the substantive next step, which is draft legislation, done?

CATHERINE KING [MINISTER]: Well, on fuel efficiency standards we’re already behind where we should be frankly. The previous government, this was not something that they pursued, but we know that only Australia and Russia are the two countries that don’t have fuel efficiency standards. So today, we’ve launched a six-week consultation period about the technical design of a fuel efficiency standard unique to Australia.

That period, as I said, is six weeks, and then we’ll have to, once we’ve received submissions in, work our way through those and all of the technical details – but my intention is to have an exposure draft of legislation available by the end of the year. I’d hope to have that introduced to the Parliament, but I don’t want to promise that in case some of the technical issues become a bit more complex, but that is our intention to do that – legislated by next year. And part of the consultation is determining, you know, when the start date is, how fast this goes, all of those things are part of consultation today.

GREG JENNETT: We might pick up on some of those. Now, the entire rationale, or the pitch, if you like, is that a standard would make EVs more plentiful and cheaper. Isn’t a natural consequence of that, though, that over time enormously popular vehicles, internal combustion SUVs and utes in particular necessarily become more expensive.

CATHERINE KING: No, not at all. And I think that really the sort of challenge here is right at the moment there is a very limited choice of electric vehicles available in Australia. And if you’re a car manufacturer determining where you would send electric vehicles, really – and if you’ve got two countries that have not got fuel efficiency standards that require or provide that sort of incentive or a bit of a stick to actually bring those to this country, that’s why you don’t.

So, this is really about expanding the amount and the range that we have of electric vehicles. It’s not about making SUVs or diesels defunct; it’s actually about making choice for all Australian consumers to decide what sort of cars they want.

GREG JENNETT: Still, there must be an end in sight for those sorts of vehicles –

CATHERINE KING: No –

GREG JENNETT: – based on what the US and European manufacturers are doing. They are already setting deadlines for the cessation of internal combustion engine vehicles in the 2030s, some early, some mid. Inevitably isn’t that where Australia is going to land, since all our cars are imported?

CATHERINE KING: No, certainly not. I mean, certainly, you know, there will always be – and you can see, you know, that already, and I live in the country, we don’t have the electric vehicle charging at the moment in the way that we want to. That's obviously part of Chris Bowen's portfolio, is to get that charging infrastructure out. We also don’t have – the towing capacity of electric vehicles, it’s getting better and better, but obviously there’s an issue about range. So there’s lots of work being done by car manufacturers to expand that.

But really what this is about, it’s not about phasing out any or changing anything in terms of how consumers decide what they want to buy; it’s actually providing an opportunity for choice. And at the moment we only have a really limited choice of electric vehicles in this country and people are waiting 18 months, two years to actually get one because why would you as a car manufacturer preference Australia over anywhere else? And that’s the problem we’ve got at the moment.

GREG JENNETT: Sure. Now, it will be mandatory when it comes in.

CATHERINE KING: Yes.

GREG JENNETT: And there’s already a strong level of support from the major brand names or vehicle makers. Consulting with them is going to be important. What assurances have they offered in the process so far and in the weeks ahead about their ability to make and land Australian-ready right-hand drive electric vehicles in the numbers that you would like to see?

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, well this is – I mean, part of the consultation is actually making sure we have a realistic fuel efficiency standard for this country that we can actually make sure that we’ve got the vehicles that people need here in the market. And it’s why it’s important we go out to consult both with car manufacturers, car dealers, components as well as people who are strong proponents of electric vehicles. So that is really what this consultation is about – to try and to do that.

Now, of course, you know, all of the dealers in Australia are currently saying at the moment they have got more demand for electric vehicles than they can supply. They are desperate –

GREG JENNETT: But that wouldn’t change if you had a mandatory standard, would it?

CATHERINE KING: Well, they are desperate to get their vehicles here, but the fuel efficiency standard at the moment, because we don’t have one it means that there is no reason, really, other than, you know, being kind to our market, that a manufacturer would manufacture cars for our specific market. So really this is what the fuel efficiency standard does – it requires manufacturers to provide a certain level of electric vehicles to our marketplace, and that’s really how the fuel efficiency standard works – to actually sort of really provide that – sort of it's a bit of an incentive but it’s also a bit of a penalty if you don’t, so that’s really how it works. And it’s worked really well in other countries, but, of course, we’ve got to make sure that it meets our Australian design rules, our safety requirements and the way in which Australian drivers drive on our roads.

GREG JENNETT: Because we’ll be competitive to get vehicles off those production lines?

CATHERINE KING: Exactly.

GREG JENNETT: Look, slightly outside the scope, I suspect, but a related question, but I’m sure if not you then other members of the Government must be considering as the pick-up continues on EVs, there’s an inevitable loss of excise for the Commonwealth or registration for the states, which have put incentives and discounts on registration in their jurisdictions. At what point in this process do you bring all of those together and look at road user charges?

CATHERINE KING: Yes, so many in terms of – obviously fuel excise is an important source of revenue for road funding in this country. You know, we do that through heavy vehicles already have a road user charge on, and that’s an important way of ensuring that we are putting money into our road infrastructure which is, you know, vital for people to be able to get safely to and from work and to and from their families.

In terms of electric vehicles, really where we’re at the moment, you know, when we came to government it was 2 per cent. It has now gone to 7 per cent, so that’s great. We’re in the space at the moment where we’re trying to put in place as many incentives as we can to electrify our passenger fleet. And you don’t want to put disincentives in the way of that.

The problem we’ve got obviously is now states and territories in different ways have started to step into this space. There’s a High Court challenge against the Victorian decision that is coming up, and the Commonwealth has joined the parties against that because we’re concerned from a constitutional point of view the issues that that raises.

So we’re not quite – we’re not there yet. You know, but we’ve got to keep monitoring this. We need to keep making sure we do modelling, really what you don’t want to do is create disincentives to electric vehicles right at the moment. But you are right to say that this issue around fuel excise is a long-term issue that governments are going to have to deal with. But this High Court challenge is really – you know, it will be interesting to see where that lands as well. So a bit premature to argue about that.

GREG JENNETT: Understood. I imagine there’s a window there that you don’t want to miss either on leaving it too late. But we can discuss that at a future date.

Just finally, because I know you’re in and out of Budget meetings at the moment, Catherine King, well outside your portfolio I admit, but the Government did receive the work of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee and has rejected summarily some of the major recommendations there, particularly around pegging JobSeeker to a substantial increase. What was the point of creating that body in the first place if it was rejected so quickly?

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, so nothing’s been particularly rejected. We’ve put that out, so we’ve publicly made available the advice that has been given to us. Obviously, you know, there’s a lot in there and there’s a huge budgetary impost, you know, frankly, if we did, you know, all of those things. We are really focused in this budget on providing cost of living relief, and that’s why, you know, the energy relief, that’s important, that will kick in 1 July. That’s part of the budget process, negotiating that, looking at where we can provide that sensible cost of living relief. We will take the advice of the advisory group, but we – you know, there are lots of things that all of us would like to do to particularly for vulnerable people, but given the budget we’ve inherited, the budget state we’ve inherited, we’ve got to be responsible about that. We, you know, have got a trillion dollars of debt we’ve got to deal with. We’ve got many measures that are expiring and really important ones. We’ve got, you know, issues in terms of trying to make sure we actually deal with issues around GPs, like people being able to access affordable health care. All of those things help vulnerable people, and the focus of this budget is really around providing that cost of living relief, making sure we’ve got, you know, the right elements for growth to keep the economy growing, that supply side, the reconstruction fund, and that we’re also responsible in the budget and we’re making sure that every dollar counts for going to those productive areas of the economy and helping people. And that’s what we’re focused on in this Budget.

GREG JENNETT: There’s certainly a long list of demands, and you didn’t even rattle off all of them there.

CATHERINE KING: There’s a lot.

GREG JENNETT: Catherine King, we’ll keep an eye on the Budget and what that holds. Thanks so much for your time today.