Smart Energy Council is very pleased the National Vehicle Summit held on 19th of August 2022 in Canberra was a turning point in Australia’s EV policy.
Photograph by Bradley Cummings.
Federal Energy Minister, Hon Chris Bowen, was clear in his keynote address; poor policy has made Australia a dumping ground for the least fuel efficient cars. We must catch up with the rest of the developed world and provide Australian consumers with the same choice of vehicles as are available overseas, at affordable prices. Bowen committed to a National EV Strategy and a discussion paper on fuel efficiency standards to get us back on track. Watch his address on the EV Future for Australia here.
State Energy Ministers & political leaders backed his comments, with Matt Kean MP, New South Wales Minister for Energy, highlighting the NSW Government’s EV Strategy, which plans to drive sales of EVs to more than 50% of new car sales by 2030. Mark Bailey MP, Minister for Transport and Main Roads of Queensland, declared he was “looking forward to working on the first real National EV Strategy” and Minister Tom Konstantinos has “abolished EV Tax in South Australia”.
The Greens and several independent MPs spoke at the event, including Greens Deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi, who declared “there is no better time than now to introduce Fuel Efficiency Standards & bring us in line with leading countries”. Independent MP Monique Ryan reiterated the need for affordability; “we need to make EVs more equitable & accessible to everyone not just those who can afford it and independent MP Zoe Daniel highlighted the need to move quickly with EV policy; “we need a strategy by end of 2022 & set the fuel efficiency standards to catch up”.
Independent Senator for ACT David Pocock argued there should be a focus on the impact to lower income households because “they stand the most to gain yet are most at risk of being left behind.”
The Hon Michael Wood shared New Zealand’s success story, which rewards the purchasing and import of low emission vehicles and penalises those buying gas-guzzling, heavy vehicles.
Mike Cannon-Brookers the founder of Boundless and Robyn Denhold, Chair as Tesla shared their insights in a fireside chat. Robyn passionately declared that “electric vehicle battery technology is the biggest and best economic opportunity for Australia in a century”, with Mike noting that in order to seize this opportunity, we must harness higher value added exports such as batteries, instead of exporting our raw materials overseas. You can watch their full discussion on the Global EV Market here.
We are proud to have worked alongside the Electric Vehicle Council, The Australia Institute, Boundless and FIMER on making this event possible and look forward to coordinating with them further in order to realise a strong electric vehicle market in Australia as soon as possible.
