√Interview: Australia’s electric future with Catherine King MP

As Australia looks to new energy options for our future road transport, how is Canberra approaching a move to electric cars and beyond?

This interview appeared in part of our documentary, Drive: Electric – Getting Australians ready for electric cars, which is available to watch on our site or on 9Now.

To understand how a national transition to electric and other new energy sources is seen by Canberra, we spoke with the Hon Catherine King MP, Federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development.

Drive: Welcome Minister, can you give us a summary of what the Minister for Industry, Transport and Regional Development covers?

Catherine King: I have been a Federal MP for almost 21 years now and have been the Member for Ballarat, so a regional country MP, and a member of the Labor Party for all that time.

At various points where we have been in government, I used to, when we were last in government, I was Assistant Minister to the Transport Minister, so I had all the Australian Design Rules, all of the regulatory arrangements when it came to the transport sector, and more recently in that government, I was Minister for Local Government as well as Regional Development.

Now in the new Albanese government, I am the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government.

That means in the infrastructure portfolio, I invest lots of money with States, Territories and local governments on roads and rail and airports and ports. In the transport space, we regulate aviation, regulate the transport sector, and a whole lot of things like that. In Regional Development, really, it is about trying to look at how you improve the regional economy.

So, lots of investment opportunities there, and also with local government.

D: What does the future look like in Australia in terms of electric cars?

CK: I think it is exciting.

I think that we are seeing the uptake slowly increasing here in Australia but obviously, there are significant issues about the availability of electric charging and the cost as well.

I think it is pretty exciting, as we saw at the last election, people really do care deeply about the climate and contributing. We say that with the amount of people who have solar panels on their roofs so they actually know that it economically makes sense but also makes sense for the environment.

I think we have got an exciting future but it is not going to be easy.

This country is big. We have lots of roads, we have lots of distances between towns and the infrastructure is not quite there yet. We have a lot of work to do. But I think it is pretty exciting.

I look at some of the industries that I work with in the transport sector, so heavy vehicle industry, the rail industry, the shipping industry, everybody is talking about what do we do? And a lot of it is being driven by environmental issues, but it is also being driven by cost.

D: What will happen to Australians who don’t want an electric car (or if an electric car does not suit their specific needs)? Will they get left behind?

CK: I think what we are going to see is a greater choice for people.

I think the sort of availability of electric vehicles will really open up, I think we will see, you have started to see some of the electric utes that are like pickup trucks in the US, but the sort of capacity is improving, the technology is improving all the time.

I think it is really going to be about choice, but I certainly can’t ever see a circumstance… I judge every year this fantastic thing called the Bullarto Tractor Pull, I judge the classic car show each year, I’ve done that for almost 20 years now and I can’t ever imagine, I can’t imagine a circumstance where there aren’t these beautiful classic cars.

Although now I am seeing the cars I drove as a kid, the HQ Holden is now a classic. It was the car I learned to drive in.

We are still going to see fuel cars, but really, it is about transition and that is going to be driven by consumer demand and also a choice. I think that is what we are going to see.

And I guess it is up to all of us how fast that transition actually occurs. And it is up to me and politicians to try and work out how we make more choices available to people.

D: How do you balance the views from some lobby groups that everyone should be in an electric car, and still ensure there is a choice of vehicle propulsion for other motorists?

CK: Make sure you have good policymakers in the room.

Yesterday the contrast couldn’t have been stronger between Chris Bowen who has an inner city electorate, of 168 square kilometres, where residents may not even own a vehicle. I have an electorate of over almost over 5500 square kilometres with a lot of country roads and lot of big distances.

I tow a 1970s caravan around as a mobile office regularly throughout. And for anyone who knows them, they are really heavy. I don’t have an electric vehicle because there is nothing on the market currently for me that is suitable.

And so really having both of us involved in the EV strategy is about, and going out broadly in consultation of the community, is actually about saying how do we make this transition work? What are the barriers? What are the incentives we need to put in place? But also really let’s see what is on the market currently, what is available, and how we actually make this transition as easy as possible.

And really, I’m the target audience to some extent, as are a lot of the people out further than me, is about how would it work for me?

And at the moment, there is no choice. I haven’t got any.

If I wanted to get an electric vehicle and still tow my 1970s Franklin, there is nothing on the Australian market I could use. And also in terms of charging and equality, there is just nothing. There are public charging stations, but they are not in places that would be viable for me at the moment.

But part of the driving Australia policy is actually to work particularly with the NRMA, to actually build a network of charging stations across the country.

They are the sort of things policymakers have got to do.

The beautiful thing about parliament is it represents every single geographic area in the country, and sometimes everyone says, “Oh, all politicians are the same.”

Well, we’re sort of not and we represent really different areas. That is actually part of why having people like Chris and I together in the room, we come from really different perspectives. I’m very pro electric vehicles, and I want to see them happen, but I also know representing country areas that sometimes that is pretty hard to find them (chargers).

D: Does the Federal Government agree with ongoing financial or tax incentives or rebates for electric cars when demand already outstrips supply? Most electric cars have a wait time of between three months and 2 years. Doesn’t this mean we no longer need incentives?

CK: I think part of the problem has been at the federal level. There haven’t really been any great incentives in terms of EVs. Different states and territories have done different things.

We have just introduced the reduction in tax in terms of EVs because they’re still really at that very expensive end. And what we want to try and do is make some of the cheaper vehicles available here, plus provide a wider breadth of vehicles available in Australia.

Bringing some of those tax incentives in place I think will be important to try and drive the price down.

That is really what we’re trying to do, just make them more affordable. They shouldn’t just be a luxury item, they should actually be a viable alternative for everyday Australians and be able to actually bring their fuel costs down frankly, given how high our fuel costs are. And also servicing costs are less for electric vehicles as well or they should be.

That is really what we’re trying to do is actually try and drive those costs down and that is what the incentives are there to do.

D: Why does petrol-electric hybrid technology not get enough credit/acknowledgment for reducing vehicle emissions, and as an affordable stepping stone to EVs?

CK: I think there was a bit of a push back our tax laws.

I think some political parties, not ours, wanted that sort of hybrid technology, not able to have the tax breaks. Really it is about emissions. And at the end of the day, if it is about getting emissions down then so our definition of EV does cover those vehicles.

It obviously doesn’t cover some of the old hybrid technology that came in several years ago, but it is really that new stuff that you’re starting to see.

It is all about getting emissions down. That is what we are trying to do. Making sure that we actually get greenhouse gas emissions down, keep the climate good and actually make it cheaper for people to able to drive cars around this great nation.

D: Given the technical challenges with electric utes (they’re fine when used empty but the range is slashed by 50 to 70 per cent when towing or carrying heavy loads), will Australians still be allowed to buy new diesel double cab utes decades from now?

CK: Who would have thought, if you look at them, you’ve had the great chance to drive those pickup trucks in the US and see what they can do, their power of them is pretty amazing, but you’re right, it is the range dropping that is really now a really significant problem. And particularly in a country like Australia where we haven’t got that network of EV charging and people aren’t going to be tolerant to wait for long periods of time.

We want to get in and out and keep going on our trip.

I think the technology is going to keep better and better, but that is the sort of balancing act that you’ve got to drive the change, provide the choice and it is really up to individuals to be able to choose what they want to drive.

At the moment you can’t get any of those utes here, of course. They would probably suit me because my 5500 square kilometres of electorate is actually okay, but they may not suit someone who lives in the Northern Territory right at the moment if you haven’t got that sort of capacity to charge.

Diesel cars are still going to play a role. They will be important, but technology is changing all the time. Who knows what we are going to see in 20 years’ time in terms of this stuff?

D: Does the government agree electric cars are part of a broader solution to reducing vehicle emissions, as opposed to the only solution?

CK: Emissions targets, so people have heard the legislation has gone through parliament for the 44 per cent emissions, is an economy-wide target.

I think we have to be realistic. Transport emissions are a pretty big factor, I think they are the largest factor. That is not just passenger vehicles or work vehicles, it is actually heavy vehicles. It is our shipping industry. It is our planes are pretty big emitters as well.

If you take transport as a whole and there is no quick and easy solution for planes other than sustainable aviation fuel, which there is work being done and we’re a bit behind on some of that stuff.

It is all across the economy.

Transport has a role to play, infrastructure has a role to play. There is some amazing stuff happening in terms of the circular economy, actually making sure that we reduce carbon in the buildings that we build, and there is a lot of really great innovation happening.

I think what has been part of the problem is we have basically had the breaks on us for the last decade because frankly, to be a bit political, we didn’t have a government that actually thought this stuff was important.

Industry is sort of doing all sorts of things. We’ve got some of the heavy train companies, Aurizon, for example, is actually looking at hydrogen cells in terms of its trains. You got all this stuff happening.

What the government is trying to do is say, “Well, let’s actually back you and see if we can incentivize some of this stuff happening a bit more quickly” or remove some of the barriers that currently, get them out of the way, so this stuff actually can happen.

Really that is about it, it is not forcing people to do anything. It is not saying we’re going to set targets and you must do X, Y, and Z. It is really about saying, well, actually technology is like “we’ve got this massive change happening, let’s just see if we can make sure it happens”.

And at the same time, we do a good job of the environment and make things cheaper for people.

D: Will the federal government reconsider the recent decision to allow used electric-car imports, given they have in most cases expired their usefulness and have extremely limited range due to battery depletion by the time they are sold to us?

CK: I mean, you can currently bring in new and secondhand EVs if they’re not sold in the Australian market, and you can get some exemptions from the Australian design rules, but the real point of the Australian design rules are twofold and having in my previous life and now this life that I’ve delegated it to another Minister, (regarding) the Australian Design Rules, there are actually two things that they are meant to do.

They are to keep the fleet that is on Australian roads, the safest it possibly can be for Australian conditions. And also to make sure that these cars can be serviced here in Australia.

It is all very well, and I’ve heard examples, not in the EV space, but I have heard examples of people importing a cheaper vehicle thinking this is the best thing since sliced bread and then they can’t actually service it anywhere in the country and it costs them an absolute bomb to try and actually deal with this.

That is what the Australian design rules are there for. Having been the person who has administered both, and they are these really big technical things that car enthusiasts will probably know them much better than even I do, but that is what they’re designed to do.

I think that there are lots of people in the economic space who go, “Oh we should get far more secondhand vehicles in.” I have my lovely colleague Andrew Leigh, who is a very fantastic economist, he comes up with some ideas every now and again about this and I just go and I’m like, “This is what this is about. It is actually about safety, servicing.”

And again, as you say, we don’t want to be a dumping ground for cars at the end of their life phase, that is actually not good for Australian consumers if we do that, but the danger is if we don’t do something about actually getting new vehicles and new technology in, we will be the dumping ground for the most polluting cars in the world. And we don’t want that to happen either.

D: Have you driven an electric car? What was it? How far did you drive it?

CK: I have not driven one myself because the bloke across the road from my house, he had a Tesla or he has a Tesla, and he let me get in it, but he wouldn’t let me actually drive it.

They have trialled them for the vehicles that drive politicians around and transport us. I was in a Tesla a few years ago when they test-drove them.

I would say my experience I reckon with the Tesla, particularly on country roads, the passenger experience wasn’t as good as it could have been. I reckon there are some better fleet options out there for those. But it’s certainly powerful, though! I couldn’t believe it.

This is exactly what it is about. It’s about we should have, as you said, you’ve driven more vehicles than I’ve probably had hot dinners and I reckon to try to actually get really some of those here into this market I think would be a much better thing and actually having that choice. Because there are some really amazing ones on the market at the moment in other countries.

D: How will the Federal Government plug the revenue gap as fuel excise declines amid a shift to electric cars?

CK: I think you would know, with the car industry leaving our shores, all of that design work, that really amazing technology, it drove innovation not just in cars but across a whole lot of R&D in engineering. That is what it was for and it was why, and you always had on our side of the house, particularly it was often the science and industry minister who was absolutely passionate about it, keeping the car industry here for that purpose.

We are great at this stuff. We are really good at research design and we’ve got this other end where we’ve got this amazing abundance of critical minerals.

What you’re looking at here, Minister Ed Husic, who has industry, what you’ll hear Chris Bowen, he has climate change and energy, what you will hear me with regional development and transport all talk about is we want to make far more things here in this country and we want to actually incentivize again, the capacity for Australian manufacturing.

If that means cars being made, then great. Car componentry, we’ve got a long history of it, got a long history of it in my own electorate. They are the sorts of things we would like to see.

And I think you are starting to see, so the battery project up in Queensland is going to be a great example of that. The more, the better. The more we build here, the more we employ, and the more we use Australian technology, the better.

I think we will probably see cars that are more electric cars, but I think they will probably still … I reckon even in 40 years’ time, there will still be a mix.

Hopefully my old HQ Holden will be worth millions and millions of dollars. If she hasn’t been crushed by now, poor old girl.

I think things, are going to look a bit different, but I think we will see more electric vehicles. I have one of the projects I’m responsible for is actually trying to start the long process of bringing high-speed rail down the East Coast.

Maybe we will even have a high-speed rail, who knows? In 40 years’ time from Ballarat to Melbourne. We’ll see.

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You can watch the full Drive: Electric documentary here or on 9Now.

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