The Morrison enigma
By Ad astra
It’s becoming alarming. Every day our Prime Minister becomes more verbose, more shouty, more insistent. The old-fashioned word ‘blatherskite’ comes to mind. Listen to him as he fronts journalists, answers questions in Question Time, or delivers his characteristic off-the-cuff oratory on any subject he chooses, from protestors to carbon capture and storage to electric cars.
In a cute appraisal in The Guardian you can read how Sarah Martin mocked his electric car approach with these acerbic words:
In a galling pivot, Scott Morrison hopes he can peek under the bonnet of an EV and be accepted as a convert.
Not so long ago he said Labor’s electric cars policy would ‘end the weekend’, and now he’s spruiking his own plan, but there’s no substance to it.
It’s hard to say which element of Scott Morrison’s new electric vehicle strategy is most galling. If you missed the unveiling on Tuesday, there’s not much to catch up on, given the strategy has all the substance of a Corn Thin.
The Coalition’s “strategy” for electric vehicle take-up contains $178m of government spending on EV infrastructure but no new policies, just like its “Australian Way” plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. It rebuffs calls for vehicle emissions standards and provides no market signal to incentivise take-up – the two measures viewed by experts as the most important to drive change.
But while a policy document three years in the making that is entirely bereft of substance is certainly offensive, it is nowhere near as galling as the way in which Morrison expects voters to forgive and forget the Coalition’s position on electric vehicles ahead of the 2019 election.
As he unveiled the government’s new clean car policy that embraced electric cars, Morrison attempted to deflect accusations of hypocrisy by denying he had attacked electric vehicles before the 2019 federal election when he had insisted Labor would “end the weekend”.
The government has already ruled out subsidising the expansion of electric and hybrid vehicles through rebates or tax breaks, saying it expected only 30% of new sales to be EVs by 2030 – a date by which a growing number of countries plan to ban altogether the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.
The “future fuels and vehicles strategy” instead includes $178m of new funding, mostly for new EV and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure and to help businesses set up charging stations for fleets. It said the government would “co-invest with industry” to install an estimated 50,000 smart chargers in homes. Under questioning at a press conference in Melbourne, Morrison denied he had criticised EV technology before the last election. But the records show that at that time he had insisted: ”battery-powered cars would ‘not tow your trailer’; ‘not tow your boat’; ‘not get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family’.” Touché!
Morrison claimed his criticism had been limited to Labor’s then-policy, not the technology itself, and that he did not regret saying EVs would “end the weekend”.
“I don’t have a problem with electric vehicles, I have a problem with governments telling people what to do and what vehicles they should drive and where they should drive them, which is what [former opposition leader] Bill Shorten’s plan was,” Morrison said at Toyota’s hydrogen centre in suburban Altona.
“I’m not going to put up the price of petrol [for] families and make them buy electric vehicles, and walk away from the things they have. That is not the Liberal way and the Nationals way.”
The Shorten-era Labor policy was not to tell people what vehicle they should drive, require anyone to buy an EV or put up the price of petrol. It included a non-binding target of 50% new car sales being EVs by 2030 and the promise of a vehicle emissions standard to reduce the average carbon pollution of the national car fleet.
Morrison stressed the government would not “be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes. Just as Australians have taken their own decision to embrace rooftop solar at the highest rate in the world, when new vehicle technologies are cost-competitive, Australians will embrace them too”.
The expansion of rooftop solar – which, according to the Clean Energy Council, has now led to 3m systems being installed across the country – was encouraged for more than a decade through federal and state incentives and subsidies.
The government vehicle strategy suggests its approach will have only a limited impact as a climate policy. It is projected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by just 8m tonnes – less than 2% of the national annual total – over the next 14 years.
Transport emissions are nearly 20% of the national total, were increasing rapidly before Covid-19 lockdowns and are projected to escalate in the years ahead.
Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, said the future policy was “another pamphlet, rather than a serious announcement”. He said a Labor government would make EVs cheaper by removing import and fringe benefits tax. “I think people will look at Scott Morrison today and this announcement and just shake their head and say, ‘What’s changed?’,’This is a guy who says he’s about new technology. Yet he’s resisted it.”
The energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, said the government’s strategy of helping install charging infrastructure, rather than phasing out fossil fuel cars, was about helping motorists “embrace the increasing range of technologies available to keep them moving in an informed and fair way”. He claimed credit for the number of low emissions vehicle models available in Australia increasing by 20% over the past eight months, but did not explain how the government’s policy had contributed to this.
Car manufacturers across the globe have released a wave of new EV models as governments have announced emissions limits for passenger cars and future bans on fossil fuel cars. Industry representatives say Australians have fewer options than comparable countries due to a lack of policy support.
Once more, Australians face the risk of being left behind. What’s new!
This article was originally published on The Political Sword
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17 comments
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Harry Lime
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pierre wilkinson
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GL
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New England Cocky
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Kaye Lee
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Michael Taylor
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Michael Taylor
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Kaye Lee
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GL
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Michael Taylor
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Michael Taylor
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wam
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GL
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Florence Howarth
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Cynthia Mitchell
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Terence Mills
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Phil Pryor
Return to home pageMight be just me,but I get the strong impression that Scotty from failed marketing is just an enormous fake.Any evidence to the contrary?
The true enigma is why the MSM continues to support this obviously out of depth, incompetent, lying scoundrel of a PM and his rorting, inept, out of touch government when it is quite apparent that they are driving Australia into a recession of epic proportions.
Pierre,
Simple answer: Scummo and Crony Co. Inc. are more than prepared to kiss the rings (that aren’t attached to fingers) of the main sleaze media who will warp and twist the news that will make them look good in the eyes of the great unwashed and attack the opposition parties. In return the rewards they receive for said favours will be boundless.
Here are some of the eVehicles that the COALition fear will replace fossil fuel guzzlers & polluters.
Rivian: https://youtu.be/KGqexebCcUo
.
Sono Sion https://youtu.be/U5LKU6bWScc
.
Mazda Mx-50: https://openroadwesternnsw.partica.online/open-road-western-nsw/or0921/flipbook/46/
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Eight (8) mini eVehicles available very soon: https://youtu.be/GXNdJnErY-U
There are a lot more including a Ford e150 utility
Angus Taylor’s contribution should not be forgotten
There’s always a tweet. 😀
Ad astra, I detect a hint of desperation in Morrison’s voice lately. Something is frustrating him.
I think he knows he’s toast.
Michael,
There is sooooooo much material to choose from with these guys. That’s what happens when you are an ignorant arrogant lying smartarse. Sorry, I know that’s not in the spirit of lifting the tone that we all hope for but, geeze Louise, it’s really hard not to call ’em boofheads.
That is not the face of a sane man.
https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/c5aa76e6029c4853a5f87a31a67b0ee6
Kaye, it’s no wonder they hate social media. It’s not the platform, but their ignorant use of it.
Stupidity is a skill.
GL, it’s the face of someone who just passed wind and is looking for someone else to blame.
Scummo makes more announcements as to what he says are labor’s actions than he does about the lnp policies.
ps
The media are already touting what the blackmailing loonies will do to any of Albo’s promises. Prompting albo’s defensive plea that his 2030 targets will not be changed.(scummo: repeats this is an “opening bid” that could be sent higher if Labor is forced to make a deal with the Greens at the election. ergo another ‘juliar’ pending)
pps media watch showed the power of the white boy’s clubs. What a disgrace.
Pardon my language, but that fat f*cking shit for brains Christensen is at again. We will hear meaningless drivel from Scummo and bugger all else.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/george-christensen-calls-for-australian-embassy-protests-on-us-conspiracy-show-20211206-p59f63.html
Bastard should be forcibly removed from being a pollie then frog marched out parliament house shoved into the gutter where he belongs.
PM hasn’t worked out yet why he is toast. Now sees & acts as if he, not us, is the victim.
Ages ago I read that Scumo’s parents paid for acting lessons for him when he was a child; HE’S BEEN PRETENDING EVER SINCE !!!
Morrison and his personal photographer went to Mt Panorama and did the essential shots in the car, on the track and then headed off avoiding any crowd contact where booing would not have fitted the image they were trying to create. The message : This is a man who loves the internal combustion engine not your namby-pamby electric cars like Labor and the Greens.
For some reason he felt it necessary to have a slogan hastily put together by his team of media and political advisers – what they came up with was :
We are “looking out the front windscreen, not in the rear vision mirror”.
George Christensen has again gone off the reservation but Morrison won’t pull him into line and Barnaby isn’t around ; he’s taken off with Vikki for a taxpayer funded holiday in London – grabbing the perks while he can.
The conservative coalition fronted by the P M, a Pathetic Misfit, and the country party rooting, rorting, lying, poking, prodding, extractive new England Nong B Joyce, is a long queue of desperate maggots, free feeding off US, the citizen taxpayer. Any bludge, scheme, rigged rort or proboscis poked victim is the go, for these suckers need other sources of blood. Political survival is default to prospering, but annihilation beckons and they don’t like it up ’em. Let us eliminate the conservative shitskulls and clean up a filthy mess of inbuilt, guaranteed, professionally organised and staffed corruption they have systematically created. If Morrison and Joyce were buildings, they would deserve to be condemned and demolished. (We would hope)