A National party press release about the government’s plans to make some vehicles up to $3000 more expensive started off well by pointing out the flaws in the proposed legislation but then lost me completely when it said:
National supports greening the country’s vehicle fleet. The previous Government started the country off on this path by setting an ambitious target of having 64,000 new electric vehicles registered in New Zealand by 2021 and introducing incentives to buy electric.
We were also planning to lead by example through transitioning the Government fleet to electric vehicles. Our policies saw the number of EVs on our roads increase from 1406 in May 2016 to 14,867 in June 2019.
Ugh. This Greenie side of National puts me right off them. If they were talking about clean rivers and lakes and protecting native habitats, that would be fine, but this nonsense about promoting expensive electric vehicles that contain batteries made from rare earth metals is off putting.
The black stroke against Labour is that they are in bed with the CRAZY Greens. Quite how it’s a good idea to position National to be like the CRAZY Greens is beyond me. National has its feet planted firmly on both sides of the fence. They don’t want to upset anyone.
“Vehicle emissions are one of the biggest contributors outside of agriculture, so we need to work on reducing them. But doing so shouldn’t come at the expense of New Zealanders’ wellbeing by increasing the cost of living further.
“Moving to electric vehicles can be done through more positive initiatives rather than telling car owners what they can’t drive and slapping them with new taxes, which is all this Government knows how to do.
“The Government should incentivise rather than penalise Kiwi motorists.”
Incentivise huh?
Translation: Bribe people to do what they don’t want to do. Whatever happened to supporting a free market? If electric vehicles made sense people and companies would use them. They don’t.