The rollout that’s even worse than the vaccine debacle By Elizabeth Farrelly June 12, 2021 ― https://www.theage.com.au/environment/sustainability/the-rollout-that-s-even-worse-than-the-vaccine-debacle-20210610-p58011.html
Again and again it comes back to a single core issue: self-loathing government. Australia, with coal-export CO2 larger than the whole of Germany’s, faces the G7 this weekend as a global emissions pariah. Electric vehicles are an easy part of the remedy. But take-up is microscopic. Why? Because we wallow in an abject policy vacuum. Because when government no longer believes in governing, true leadership becomes impossible. When government worships only corporate gods; when it thinks strong governance involves kissing up and kicking down, when in the same week it toadies to the mining lobby and denies a desperately ill three-year-old medical treatment for political reasons, it’s all over. Many aver that we need a federal ICAC. But when our federal government mopes in its pink, poster-covered bedroom wishing to be a blustering tycoon when it grows up it doesn’t have to be corrupt, because it has been ideologically corrupted. Electric vehicles are a no-brainer. Everyone’s talking zero carbon by 2050. Even Scott Morrison inches this way. But when the PM told mining executives last week that we’ll take “the Frank Sinatra approach” to net-zero, we’ll “do it our way in Australia”, it was clear what he meant. Do nothing. Scott Morrison likes to invoke the “animal spirits of capitalism”. The phrase, from Hobbes, Emerson, Austen and others, was made famous by Maynard Keynes. Morrison uses it to offer pagan flattery �C as if business leaders in Perth or Sydney were our fierce tribes of Viking warriors �C while casting capitalism as a natural force, benevolent and sacrosanct. Capitalism, the suggestion goes, will take us to zero emissions with no help from government. This, no doubt, is “our way”. It’s the lazy-as-she-goes approach, like digging up coal and selling it, like watching TV with a tinnie and calling that sport. It is, “she’ll be right, mate”. But will she? Transport produces some 19 per cent of Australia’s emissions. EVs reduce this by around 40 per cent, even if the electricity is from coal. If it’s renewable, then emissions fall to zero. True, they’re still cars, and the car has other attendant downsides. Even EVs worsen sprawl, devour farmland, destroy community, nurture ego and coarsen perception. But unless we truly think Australia can cold-turkey its car-addiction, EVs must be top of our to-do list. Will the market take us there? Many brands are now available and driving range is up to 400 kilometres. In the US, EV popularity is huge, with Ford reporting 45,000 orders for its new F-150 Lightning all-electric ute within 48 hours of release. Here, EVs sit at a meagre 0.75 per cent, and take-up is dropping. Other countries are all over this. Norway, despite its huge oil interests, has nearly 75 per cent electric vehicles. Britain has 10 per cent and proposes (alongside India, Japan, Thailand and Germany) to ban the sale of internal combustion vehicles by 2040. In the US, President Biden (Congress willing) proposes to invest $174 billion into growing the EV market, including tax incentives and 500,000 charging stations by 2030. Here, with a hotch potch of rules and regulations, it’s classic Australiana. Too much government, not enough leadership. The ACT offers free rego and no stamp duty for zero-emissions cars, and no-interest household loans of $15,000. Victoria offers a $100 rego discount and a $3,000 purchase subsidy, but taxes EVs on road use. Queensland and the Northern Territory offer reduced rego. Tasmania put $600,000 into a charging network. South Australia promises $13 million for a charging network. In NSW, Transport Minister Andrew Constance did at least oppose Dominic Perrottet’s lunatic proposal last year to tax electric vehicles, in the meantime anyway. Basically they’ll wait until enough of us have them. There’s a maximum $30 discount on registration (huh?) and Constance now says he’ll provide green power to trains and purify WestConnex by electrifying all buses (and “eventually” all vehicles.) But the high, unsubsidised cost of EVs and dearth of charging infrastructure puts many people off. It’s a clear case for overall policy direction. There are many tools available; tax incentives, regulatory clarity, technical and legal guidance, capital investment in charging infrastructure. But the essence is simple. We want these things: how can we make them happen? Yet even compared with the roll-out of vaccines, the chain-dragging and buck-passing in EV rollout has been slow-to-imbecilic. In 2019 Scott Morrison promised us an EV strategy that would “coordinate action across governments, industry and urban and regional communities, and will include considering whether mandating an electric-vehicle plug type could improve the consistency of public charging.” Within weeks, he was attacking Labor’s proposal to use tax exemptions to grow EVs to 50 per cent of all new car sales by 2030 as a proposal to “end the weekend”. Since then? Nada. What should happen? Charging is critical. Right now, Chargefox has some 700 stations around the country (some fast, some ultra-fast) and Ausgrid has prototyped its plan to convert its 13,000 green power-boxes to charging stations. But this needs a huge kick start. Many people cannot charge at home (although the Owners Corporation Network has a great package of advice and assistance for apartment owners wrangling strata bodies). A powerpoint plug-in takes all night but an ultra-fast charger gives you 400 kilometres in 15 minutes. These should be everywhere, on every street, with reserved parking. It’s pretty simple. We should take the target seriously. Zero emissions by 2050 is not “preferable”, as Morrison now says. Let’s actually commit. Let’s have a five-year moratorium on EV rego, stamp duty and road tax. Let’s roll out ultra-fast public charging stations across the country, 20 a week. Scott Morrison may deride the eco-credentials of “inner-city″ types. He may stand against the G7. But we inner-city types, and they, the G7, are singing the same. We’re here to help. But you need to come out of your bedroom, Scott. Where the bloody hell are ya? --
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