Interview with Craig Reucassel, ABC Sydney

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Over the weekend there was an EV expo in Sydney. It ran from Friday to Sunday with over 100 vehicles on display and over 40 exhibitors, and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, was one of the keynote speakers at the conference. He joins me now. Morning, Minister.

CHRIS BOWEN: Good morning, Craig.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: I didn't get to the conference, but I must admit over the years I've been to a few of these, and probably several years ago they were kind of sad, there were kind of three or four cars there, and it was a bit sad, but over 100 vehicles now. Are we finally catching up with overseas countries that have some many more options of EVs now?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yes, we are, and yes, there were lots of very good looking and impressive options there, and affordable options there, and brands that people frankly probably haven't heard of that are coming in to Australia, and also, Craig, I thought the thing that struck me yesterday was just the number of people there, I mean huge interest from Australians in buying EVs.

But part of this is because, of course, our new vehicle efficiency standards coming into force on 1 January, and one of the reasons why we've been so far behind the rest of the world is we haven't had any standards, only Australia and Russia didn't have efficiency standards to make the manufacturers send us good, efficient cars. We've fixed that, and I think manufacturers are already responding.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yeah, it's good we finally got into there before Russia, that would have been embarrassing.

CHRIS BOWEN: Yeah, even more embarrassing [overtalk].

CRAIG REUCASSEL: You say affordable. I mean I think cost has been the big barrier for even people I speak to are like dead keen to get an EV, cost and range are the two things talked about. We have seen a big drop in costs now. How cheap are we sort of finally talking now?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yeah, you're right. I think there's two barriers, both of which we're working on: affordability and range anxiety. But on affordability, we've now got 23 models under 60,000, and I think the cheapest you can get an EV is around 35,000. So still a lot of money, but frankly, any new car is going to be a lot of money. You know, they're all expensive. And even on utes, we've seen the BYD hybrid ute go on sale in the last few weeks, $60,000, just around $60,000, which as utes go is a very competitive price, and it's selling like hot cakes.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: It's interesting you say about the hybrid ute, because, you know, I think first half of last year we saw EVs outsell hybrids, it was kind of a huge influx at the time. We now see news today that hybrids are outselling EVs.

Do you, as a government, I guess, you know, what do you think about this? How do we overcome that I guess it's the range anxiety that makes people go, "Hang on a second, I'm not confident enough in the charging network, I'm going to get a hybrid instead of an EV".

CHRIS BOWEN: I think that's right. Look, these figures move up and down and, you know, plug-in hybrids and EVs swap places, yet EV sales are still up.  And you know, in two years we've tripled the number of EVs on the road, so the direction of travel is very clear.

Having said that, yeah, I speak to people who say, "Look, I really want to buy an EV, but I'm just concerned about charging. I might make my next car a hybrid, and then the car after that an EV if the charging's up to scratch". That's a pretty common view.

So that just reminds us, if we need reminding, we've got more work to do on charging, and we're getting there, you know, we've got our Federal Government policy of one charger once every 150 kilometres. We've finished the Melbourne to Adelaide route and we're getting on with the rest of it in partnership with the NRMA.

But it's not just us, I mean the private sector's putting in more chargers every day.  I've seen figures that, you know, where the private sector puts charging in, their - obviously customers start to go there more often if they're EV drivers, because it's an attractive proposition.

State Governments have got policies.

So, we are massively increasing the number of chargers across the country, but I think it's important that we also do so prominently, so people realise they're actually there.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yeah, it's interesting you say that, because I must admit as somebody who has an EV, I find that on long drives actually, it's kind of less of a problem, they're kind of, you know, that was what was first dealt with. It's actually kind of, for people I talk to in suburbs kind of going, "I'm not confident about it". It's like it's a chicken and egg argument. It's like people go, "Well, there's not enough people with EVs for us to put in lots of chargers on the street". But without them being there and being kind of everywhere where people see them, I don't think people are going to take that next step.

I think the Inner West Council's about to put in 130 chargers in the area. So presumably that's the next step for government and for change.

CHRIS BOWEN: I think it's all the above, Craig, I think it is suburban charging, it is more regional charging, 'cause you still get people who say, look, the average Australian doesn't actually drive that many kilometres a day, but you want to know that when you do want to drive for a long drive, the infrastructure is there. Increasingly it is there, but it's a very legitimate concern that people want to be reassured about that.

The vast majority of people charge at home, of course, the vast majority of charging comes from home, and one of the things I announced yesterday was that we now have an Australian standard for vehicle-to-grid charging, which is a big, big step forward, so this is reverse charging. So you can - 

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Okay. So now you can use the power in your car, and a car battery's a hell of a lot bigger than house batteries - 

CHRIS BOWEN: Correct.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: - and you can feed it back into the grid. So that's actually, what, become government policy now, has it?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, what we now have, and we've been working on this for a long time is, it's approved by Standards Australia, and what can now happen is that the car manufacturers who allow this and the charger manufacturers who do bidirectional charging can now register their product with the Clean Energy Council, who's administering it on behalf of the government, and that should take a month or so.

And so now we have the standard. Products can now say, "Yep, we comply with the standard", and can put themselves on the market and say, "We comply with the Australian Standard, and it can happen".

Once those products are registered and people have got them, it can happen now, it's now a part of the system.

And that's really, really important, putting consumers in charge of their own energy, saying, "Yeah, I'll charge my car now while prices are negative", and, "I'll charge the grid later when prices are positive, and I'll make money off it", and it helps the consumer, helps the grid, helps everyone.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yeah, there is obviously some progress happening around the world on this issue. COP29 starts today in Azerbaijan; we'll see what happens there. But is the election of Trump going to stifle progress on climate change?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, it's more important than ever that the COP comes together, and countries work well together. Look, obviously, in Australia we just work with the circumstances that we're given, and you know, election results, whether it be UK or US or Germany, are not in our control. What is in our control is the approach we take. We will continue to come to this COP with a leadership frame of mind. The world hasn't stopped warming, and no election result will change that.

Australia actually has opportunities here. The renewable energy investment will occur. If other countries take the decision that they don't want that renewable investment, it will still occur, it will just occur in other countries, including Australia.

But in the COP, you know, I've been asked to co-chair the discussions about international climate finance, which I'll do with every you know, with every bit of energy I can muster to try and get a good result there. It's a big - there are high degrees of difficulty, big task, but you know, just because one country has changed its view or an election has changed its view, doesn't change the fundamentals of the importance of it.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: It doesn't change it necessarily in Australia, although it has changed the debate a bit. We've seen the National Party calling for maybe getting rid of net zero in response to the Trump election, so maybe it will change the national debate here.

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, look, that's a matter for the Coalition. I mean, as you know, Craig, net zero is the absolute bare minimum commitment. It's not enough. It's the end goal, which is the absolute bare de minimis thing that you can do as a country, and the National Party doesn't want to do that.

And so this just is a reminder to me, frankly, that if Peter Dutton were Prime Minister you'd have the likes of Barnaby Joyce and Keith Pitt and Alex Antic and Matt Canavan calling the shots, and it would be worse than last time, worse than Morrison, worse than Abbott on climate.

Now the Australian people will get a chance to have a view about this next year, but it will be a very stark choice, because you've got one side of politics not even committed to the bare minimum requirement, the entry ticket to the conversation about action on climate change.

You've got us saying, "Yep, this is hard, but we're going to get on with it". We've just seen new figures showing renewable energy investment way up in Australia at a rate which is on track for 82 per cent renewables, you've got us continuing on with the job of developing our export potential to help other countries decarbonise.

This is the stark choice that the Australian people are facing, an opposition which is by its actions effectively engaging in climate denial and delay and a government getting on with it.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: We have these kind of big global issues going on, but some of this also comes down to the really small issues. Gus is on the line about apartments. Morning Gus, what do you want to ask the Minister?

SPEAKER: Yeah. Good morning Craig, good morning Minister. Look, what I wanted to say, if I may bring you back to the EV issues, you know, it's a great technology, it's a great initiative to help the environment, but there are still so many red tape, so many restrictions around the quantity, especially when we are talking about quantity of mass parking areas, especially in high rise buildings. Like the government's now, they're plonking these high-rise buildings everywhere, but we can't put like EV chargers for every single car.

Like, if, for example, there's a carpark of 200 car spaces, you would be lucky if you can get a complete strata and the insurance companies and the fire engineers and all the - just to put a maximum of 10, 15 chargers.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yeah, yeah, absolutely Gus. Minister, good question from Gus, and we've actually got a few come in on the text line similarly about apartments, trying to get in there, the difficulty - that seems to be the area that really needs government to kind of be a bit more proactive on.

CHRIS BOWEN: Yeah, thanks. Good morning, Gus. And Gus isn't wrong, and apartments and stratas are, if I may say, a part of the challenge across the board, not just with EV charging, but with solar and batteries and the whole thing, it is a complicated arrangement, and of course strata management's administered by State Governments, but there is some progress being made, and we're looking at all this in terms of what more we can do.

Inevitably, with a lot of people without a driveway, as I've said, the vast majority of people charge in their driveway at home where they have a detached home and a driveway and can put a charger in.

A lot of people aren't in that circumstance. You're going to find that's where street side charging, which I think you just mentioned some councils are doing that, and you know, there's [overtalk].

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yeah, that's going to be that's the approach. But my only question with that is --

CHRIS BOWEN: So street-side charging will play a big role.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: It will do, but it means, you know, as you said, the cheapest is when you're charging at home, people in apartments, they want to be able to use their own electricity, not pay extra on the streets. But anyway, it's a conversation for another time. Thanks for speaking to us, Minister.