OPINION
In news that should surprise absolutely no-one, another Labor climate policy is heading for disaster. Just like all the other ones: remember Julia Gillard’s “Cash for Clunkers”, not to mention the carbon tax? Or Kevin Rudd’s dodgy home insulation scheme, which caused house fires and the deaths of apprentices?
Labor are back at it again.
Chris Bowen’s electric vehicle strategy is on track to fail after government department officials predicted fewer than a third of new car sales would be battery-operated by 2030, casting doubt on Labor’s modelling underpinning its green agenda.
Even 30 per cent sounds optimistic, given that electric car sales have slumped around the world. Even with drastic cost-cutting of sale prices, of an average $13,000 dollars. I guess not everyone’s that keen on risking self-immolation.
But 30 per cent is a far come-down from Boofhead Bowen’s confident election boasting.
The latest estimates from the federal transport department are that electric cars will make up 27 per cent of new car sales by 2030, well below the 89 per cent forecast in Labor’s pre-election modelling that helped boost its 43 per cent emissions reduction target […]
The department also estimates electric cars will account for 5 per cent of nation’s small vehicle fleet by 2030, a third below Labor’s pre-election modelling of 15 per cent.
And that’s even with the typical crony socialist policies like exempting EVs from import tariffs and fringe benefit taxes.
The failure of mass EV sales to materialise also blows holes in the government’s emissions reduction targets.
The RepuTex modelling predicted Labor’s policies would lead to 82 per cent of Australia’s electricity being powered by renewables by the end of the decade and a $275 reduction in household energy bills by 2025.
Yes, well, we all know how that one’s going. Electricity bills continue to skyrocket.
Energy experts cast doubt over Labor’s electric car projections before the election but Mr Bowen refused to release the detailed modelling that underpinned the assumption.
Because there wasn’t any. In an even more boneheaded move than usual, Labor made up the assumptions first, then told the modellers to figure out a way to fudge it.
Ahead of the election, the Prime Minister said Labor did not make a political decision about landing on an emissions reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030, despite it being marginally below the uncosted 45 per cent target that hurt the party in regional areas in the 2019 election. Instead, Mr Albanese said RepuTex modelled the party’s policies announced in opposition and that figure came out as 43 per cent […]
Labor workshopped its policies with the modelling agency and “settled” on a suite of measures that would lead to an emissions target the party was confident of taking to an election.
If that sounds like putting the climate activist before the orange paint, it was.
Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien seized on the modelling discrepancies between RepuTex and the government, saying Labor had “failed to deliver against its own targets and promises”.
“This is what happens when you pluck arbitrary political targets out of thin air and then refuse to have Treasury or the Department assess them,” Mr O’Brien said.
“Its 43 per cent emissions reduction target, 82 per cent renewable energy target, 89 per cent electric vehicle target and the all-important $275 reduction in power bills are all set to fail.”
The Australian
Well, if there’s one thing you can say about the Albanese government, they’re absolute masters of arsing up their own loony policies.
The only problem is that it’s the rest of us who have to pay for their moronic incompetence.