Labor’s “announcement” of an EV standard is interesting in what it says about the party’s relationship with the public. In fact there was no announcement, just an announcement that an announcement would be made in the future. Instead of jumping into the water you stick your toe in and test the temperature. So you get a cold toe instead of a shock to the system.
In 2019 it was different under Bill Shorten. The change reflects the differences in the leaders, with Albo more likely to take a cautious approach while Shorten believed everything he read on Twitter, equating the opinions of the most vocal Left supporters with the average Aussie.
They learned their lesson because we got Morrison for three years.
In 2023 instead of saying “we’re going to set the fleet emissions per kilometre travelled to 105g of carbon” like they did in 2019 (which would require all new cars purchased to be pure-electric EVs) they’re saying, “hey look we’re in the future going to set an emissions target for new vehicles”.
Chalk and cheese.
This new announcement is Albo doing a bit of market research. I imagine that he’s got the boffins organised doing surveys of ordinary Australians roped into contribute to the climate cause in a market where the operating specifics are totally different from, say, Norway or Finland. I don’t envy him the task but it probably has to be done. The optics don’t look good where the recent surge in PEEV sales only brings the PEEV share of new car sales to 3 percent. It’s hard to talk with your European counterparts about climate change when the realities on the ground in Coonabarabran or Cooma are so different from in Scandinavia.
