Speech to Smart Energy 2024 Conference and Expo

I know you join me in celebrating the fact that this is the land of the Gadigal people and in paying our respects to their elders, past present and emerging.

And given it’s international Womens Day tomorrow, I'd also like to acknowledge all the women here today, who are actively playing a role in - helping transform Australia’s energy and climate future.

It would be nice to be at the point where it’s completely unremarkable to have women leading the energy transformation. But we all know the industry has traditionally been a very male dominated one, and there’s still a way to go.  

I’m having morning tea after this, with a group of women from across the sector, as always, I'm all ears when it comes to ideas to improve the sector and participation in it by all groups.  

It’s fantastic to be back at one of my favourite events of the year!

The Smart Energy Conference and Exhibition has become an annual highlight for all of us passionate about renewable energy thanks to the leadership of John Grimes and his team.  

I’ll share with you a confession: my view that the conference is great, but the exhibition is better.

The speeches are good.  

But the exciting products and cutting-edge innovations are what brings me back every year and means I stay for as long as I do.  

And as proof that I’m not just saying that, I have evidence.  

At last year's exhibition I went to the stand of an Australian owned and operated battery manufacturer, Red Earth.

I checked out their products closely.  

And as a direct result of that visit, I now have one helping power our house and supporting the grid very efficiently.  

Now that doesn’t mean I’m signing contracts at every stand I’m visiting today!  I don’t want every company out there in the exhibition hall getting excited as I approach!

OK. It’s not just the exhibition that is important.  

This conference part is important too.  

Important because we still have arguments to win.  

Important because some in the political debate have moved on from outright climate change denial to something potentially even more dangerous: We might call it, “It’s all too hardism”.  

It’s the latest iteration of the Australian conservatives desperate efforts to keep the climate culture wars alive.  

You know their lines.  

“Renewable energy is all too hard, so we will just have to go nuclear.”  

As if Australians don’t deserve the cleanest cheapest and most reliable new power you can get – firmed renewables.

“It’s all too hard to get cleaner and cheaper cars sent to Australia."

As if Australians don’t deserve being able to save thousands on fuel bills and more choice in the cars they drive. It’s this last one I am going to concentrate my remarks on today.

We all know that introducing New Vehicle Efficiency Standards is a long overdue reform.  
It’s been tried before.

In fact, it was in the environment policy that John Howard took to the 2001 Federal election. But they didn’t implement it.  

The Turnbull Government tried it.

Josh Frydenberg and Paul Fletcher were eloquent advocates for efficiency standards.  

They correctly said that efficiency standards would not see car prices go up.  

They argued that using less petrol would save motorists money.  

We supported them from Opposition.  

But they couldn’t get it past the climate denying right wing of their own Party.  

That part of the LNP that somehow controls the Coalition even more now that cleaner technology is the cheapest it’s ever been – and as action on climate has gotten even more urgent.  

Australians have paid a big price for this policy failure and now it’s time to fix it.  

The Liberals were right when they argued all through 2016 and 2017 that efficiency standards would reduce the amount of money Australians pay for petrol.  

They were wrong to abandon the policy and they are wrong to engage today in a pathetic scare campaign against a policy they embraced and promoted just a few years ago.  

At the time, the Liberals adopted a similar policy development process to us.  

They released an impact statement for consultation.  

This statement showed that, based on petrol prices of $1.30 a litre, Australians would save $27.5 billion out to 2040.  

They were conservative in their figures. ‘It was seven years ago this week that the previous Government finished their consultation on their fuel efficiency standard – exactly the same point we are at now.

Australians have since wasted around $4 billion unnecessarily on fuel because the Liberal Party didn’t have the courage to stick to a policy they knew was right.  

The fuel bill on that inaction is ticking up every day.

That’s billions of dollars that could have, and should have, been in the pockets of Australian motorists, not petrol companies.

The LNP’s failure of courage in 2018, and their current pathetic dishonesty in promoting a fake scare campaign they know to be untrue, is a betrayal of their obligations to the Australian people to act in their best interests.  

It is a reminder for all that Scott Morrison may have left the building, but his “end the weekend” mentality is alive and dominant in the alternative government of Australia.  

It’s a reminder, if we needed one, that the Australian people sent a memo to the LNP in May 2022 to modernise, to finally get with the program on the biggest challenge facing our planet and to embrace good policies when it comes to climate.  

A memo that has been returned to sender.  

The thing about New Vehicle Efficiency Standards is that this is not radical policy.  

These are standards that are in place around the world to incentivise car companies to manufacture and supply a wide range of vehicles that use less petrol -  more efficient petrol and diesel versions of vehicles, EV’s, hybrids.  

It’s a bit hard to say something that has been policy in the United States since the mid 1970s is climate radicalism.  

It’s also a bit tricky to say that a policy that motorists in Saudi Arabia have been benefiting from for years is a variety of woke inner-city activism.  

The Standard works by setting a headline target each year for total emissions across all the vehicles a manufacturer sells in Australia that year.  It encourages them to offer more fuel saving options right across the board – from their smallest city hatchbacks to their biggest utes and SUVs.  

As in other markets, car companies will provide a range of vehicle offerings that meet the full range of consumer needs while being more fuel efficient on average.

It’s about more choice to spend less on petrol.

Yes a greater and more affordable range of EV’s and plug-in hybrids will become available to Australians because of this.  

In 2022 there were 500 EV and plug-in-hybrid models available globally, in Australia in 2024, we still have less than 100 EV and plug-in-hybrids available for sale.

Australians deserve better choice.

And they deserve better choices not just in EV’s and plug-hybrids.

Motorists for whom EV’s may not be the right fit at the moment deserve the choice to not be spending thousands of dollars more than need to on fuel.

Drivers overseas have the choice of dozens of model variants from the most popular car brands globally, that use less petrol than what those car companies send to Australia.  

Stakeholders have made clear that the driver for this lack of supply – not just for EVs and hybrids, but also for more efficient ICE vehicles - is the absence of a New Vehicle Efficiency Standard.

It’s also widely supported by those who put the interests of motorists first.

We’ve got the NRMA, state motoring bodies such as RACQ, Choice,  – as well as several car companies including Hyundai, Kia, VW and more.

And of course the Smart Energy Council and countless others. So instead of embracing this opportunity to provide Australian drivers with more choice, the opposition is running a scare campaign on price that they know is a fallacy.  

There is no real-world evidence that new vehicle efficiency standards cause consumer price increases for cars.

Take it from Paul Fletcher – current LNP frontbencher, when he said  “what we have seen when these standards have been introduced around the world is that it does not result in a material change in price.”

We know the real reason the LNP is so strongly opposing this policy.  Even though it’s about choice.  Even though the preferred model would about save motorists $12 billion in fuel cost by 2030, and $108 billion by 2050.

It also reduced emissions: so they can’t have a bar of it.  

Passenger and light commercial vehicles account for 62 per cent of all transport emissions. Without this Standard in place, by 2035 the cars we drive will put out an extra, and unnecessary, 100 million tonnes of carbon emissions. By 2050 that’s an extra 369 million tonnes of CO2.  

Introducing efficiency standards is in keeping with the approach we have taken across the board in my portfolio over the last 18 months: taking policies out of the too hard basket and putting them on the to do list.

Departmental estimates show that by 2028, buyers of a new car, averaged out among brands and models, could cut their fuel costs by about $1000 per vehicle per year, more if you drive longer distances.  

Over the life of a vehicle, the preferred settings will provide over $17 000 in savings.

This is long term cost-of-living relief for households.  

Driving down the cost of transport on the household budget.

The savings could be bigger again for those buying electric vehicles, especially if they charge with rooftop solar.  

So we’re also making it easier for more people to buy EV’s if that’s what they want – with tax discounts and incentives to take up to $11, 000 off a $50, 000 EV or plug in hybrid.

Consultation on the detailed design of this policy closed on Monday and Minister Catherine King and I will carefully consider submissions made. But we will also be proceeding eagarly, because this policy comes about 20 years too late - and for too long motorists have been ripped off in extra fuel costs.  

As important as efficiency standards are, there are other policies we are making progress on to support those Australians making the choice to switch to electric vehicles.  

Boosting charging and reducing range anxiety remains an important priority.  
The number of publicly available fast chargers increased by over 70% over calendar year 2023. That’s more than 800 locations.

And more in the less than two years since the election than the entire nine years under the previous Government.

But again, we have a lot more catching up to do.

And we are about to see a further significant uptick in the opening of new chargers as part of our “Driving The Nation” program that’s about delivering a public charger at least once every 150km on our national highway network.  In fact, I am opening some great new chargers in fairly remote locations next week.  

And today we’re announcing a more than $76 million package that will make it easier for anyone who wants an electric vehicle to buy one new, or second-hand – and to use them whenever, wherever, however they want.  

This package includes $50m from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation which is targeted at helping car dealers bring a wider range and bigger volume of new electric vehicles into the country.  

All up, the CEFC expects this to help put an extra 20,000 EV’s onto Australia’s roads in the next two years. 

And, in another announcement I am pleased to tell you about today, ARENA is also contributing $3.5 million on top of the $12 million being spent by 22 West Australian local councils so they can replace their current diesel fleet with light EVs.

So, friends,

We know that transport is currently our third biggest emitting sector and is on track to become our biggest emitting sector by 2030 if we don’t take action.  

But even more importantly – we also know that Australians and their wallets have been let down by a lack of policy courage.

By a betrayal which has seen all of us miss out on choices and ranges available in every other major developed economy except for Russia.

That ends now.