Labor leader says PM has run out of steam on ‘scare campaigns’ and resorted to ‘scaring you about their own policies’

The latest stage of the unofficial 2019 federal election campaign has opened with a battle over Australia’s electric car future, with Scott Morrison accusing Bill Shorten of wanting to “end the weekend”.

In response the Labor leader accused the government of running out of steam on “scare campaigns” and so it had resorted to “scaring you about their own policies”, as the two major parties argue the toss on very similar policies.

Both the Coalition and the Labor party have policies to increase Australia’s electric car take-up, with the government assuming electric vehicles will make up between a quarter and half of all new car sales by 2030, while Labor has set a target of 50% of all new car sales by the same year.

But despite the similarities in policy, confirmed by an environment department official during last week’s Senate estimate hearings, the government immediately launched into attacking Labor’s plan as ‘out of touch’.

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“I think the problem with this is, Bill came up with this plan last Monday and it’s clearly not thought through,” Morrison told Sydney radio 2GB on Friday.

“I mean he reckons that 50 per cent of the cars that we all are driving around in 10 years from now will be electric cars.

“But the share of the market at the moment is 0.2 per cent. He hasn’t thought through what that means for diesel and fuel excise, that’s around about $11bn a year.

“Now, if you go and buy an electric car, well obviously you don’t pay the fuel excise, what is that going to mean for that revenue stream and what’s the cost of that?

“What about all these charging stations, how much is that going to cost? I mean if you have an electric car and you live in an apartment, are you going to run the extension cord down from your fourth floor window?

“I mean this thing is not thought through and it’s just typical of what we see from Labor; a big goal – a 45 percent emissions reduction target, climate heroes – but the actual detail of it is all fluff.”

On Sunday, Morrison went further, but pivoted the attack, moving away from criticisms about increasing the number of electric vehicles on Australian roads, which Morrison said he supported, to Shorten personally, for his claim last week that depending on what the original charge is “it can take eight to 10 minutes” to charge a vehicle. “It can take longer,” Shorten said as a qualifier.

“We don’t have a problem with electric vehicles,” Morrison said on Sunday. “In fact, we’ve been facilitating the development of the technologies.

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“… So look, the point about it is not whether electric vehicles are good or bad. In fact, they have a role to play, increasingly, in the vehicle fleet of Australia over the next decade. The problem here is Bill Shorten doesn’t understand his own policy.

“And in typical Labor fashion, they want to ram it down the necks of all Australians. So the cheapest car you can currently buy, as an electric vehicle, presently, my understanding is, including all on road costs and the rest of it, is about $45,000 to $50,000 a year.

“That’s the cheapest car Bill Shorten wants to make available to you to buy in the future, and I’ll tell you what – it’s not going to tow your trailer. It’s not going to tow your boat. It’s not going to get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family.

“Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend when it comes to his policy on electric vehicles where you’ve got Australians who love being out there in their four-wheel drives.

“He wants to say see you later to the SUV when it comes to the choices of Australians. And this is fundamentally the difference between us and Labor when it comes to these issues.

“I have no problem with the adoption of these new technologies and we facilitate it and we’re part of it. But what Bill Shorten wants to do, without seemingly even understanding what his policy does, is trying to drive people into these decisions and his policies simply don’t have the backing to explain how he will achieve the targets.”

Shorten responded by pointing out the similarities in the two policies, claiming the government was “so addicted to scare campaigns, they’re even scaring you with their own policies”.

“Josh Frydenberg said on January 12 last year – he said that in the near future, there will be 230,000 electric vehicles,” Shorten said. “And he said that he expected that by 2030 there will be over a million electric vehicles. Don’t take my word for it – take the treasurer’s word for it.

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“What we’re doing is announcing a policy that makes it easier for electric vehicles to be used in Australia by creating a network of charging stations.

“But Mr Frydenberg didn’t stop there. He also said that backing electric vehicles would be an economic dividend. Correct. And he said that it would be good for the climate. So this government never missed a tune over a scare campaign, even if it is one that they actually support, which is the expansion of electric vehicles. By 2050, in all seriousness, it’s projected that there will be 2bn electric vehicles around the world.

“What Labor has said is that by 2030, we would like to encourage people, to see that half of the new car sales are electric vehicles. That doesn’t mean that the government is going to go around in 2030 and confiscate someone’s ute.”

On his eight-minute charge claim, Shorten said charging times depended “on the technology of the charging station” and how flat the battery was.