Electric Vehicles

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:29): Supplementary: Treasurer, why have you imposed a tax, another cost burden, on EVs when the uptake of these vehicles remains at 0.1 per cent of new car sales? Why haven't you provided any incentives, like scrapping certain taxes, to make these vehicles more affordable, or is there a plan or a target to ban the new sales of petrol and diesel vehicles?

The PRESIDENT: I remind the Hon. Mr Pangallo and other members that supplementaries are not to be second reading speeches, so I would ask that you make them shorter. I call the Treasurer to respond.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:30): Unless the Hon. Mr Pangallo has a plan to propose to ban petrol or diesel vehicles, we certainly have nothing in contemplation, and I am not aware of any such plan of banning. The argument for electric vehicles from many, many people in the community—

The Hon. K.J. Maher interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The Leader of the Opposition should remain silent.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: —is that it is a no-brainer if we are going to achieve zero emissions. Those who are proponents of electric vehicles are arguing strenuously that in the not too distant future they will be more than cost competitive in terms of their pricing, as inevitably with new technology there are improvements and cost reductions. If ultimately those experts are right, that the cost competitiveness of those particular vehicles is much the same as our existing vehicles, and if it is doing good things for the environment, then overwhelmingly we believe that consumer preference will move towards that particular option.

The other thing we indicated yesterday, as we look at the implementation of this and the discussions we are having with other jurisdictions, is that we are looking still to pitch for the average EV user a lower total cost of both the road user charge and registration than for existing vehicles, so that in the pricing for an average user, in terms of kilometre usage of roads, the cost, when compared with a comparable current vehicle user, would be slightly lower.

So we are endeavouring to model or implement a system which would still have within the pricing system an encouragement for electric vehicle users. We think that consumers, if the price is about the same, for the good of the economy and for the environment, will make a zero emission choice.