2021-05-02
The Greens have said the Victorian Labor Government must scrap its proposed tax on people who drive electric vehicles if it truly wants to make a difference to EV uptake.
They say the modest incentives announced overnight don’t go far enough and will be completely undermined by the government’s backwards tax.
The reality is the laughable ‘up to $3,000’ incentive for only 20,000 cars will do almost nothing to offset the effect of the proposed tax on Victorians when they weigh up whether to make the switch to an EV.
Quotes attributable to Victorian Greens spokesperson for transport, Sam Hibbins MP:
“The state government’s EV announcement is an attempt at a political fix, not a genuine climate fix.
“While governments around the world are racing ahead with massive cash incentives and bans on petrol cars, the benefits of this modest announcement will be undermined by Labor’s own tax on electric vehicles.
“Labor’s confusing approach of offering incentives for electric vehicles with one hand while increasing taxes on them with other will undermine efforts to reduce transport emissions.
“To properly tackle the increasing level of emissions from transport, the state government needs to ditch the EV tax while keeping and increasing the incentives for electric vehicles.”
Quotes attributable to Australian Greens spokesperson for transport, Senator Janet Rice:
“These incentives are nowhere near enough to make a difference to electric uptake in Victoria, or to reduce transport emissions.
“EU countries offer $15K incentives - and that’s without the disastrous EV tax the Victorian State Government is proposing that they know would stymy EV uptake.
“A laughable ‘up to $3,000’ incentive for only 20,000 cars won’t even offset the effect of the proposed EV tax on consumer perceptions when they weigh up whether to purchase an EV.
“We need a national approach and plan for fast EV uptake in Australia, so we don’t fall even further behind the rest of the developed world. But because the Morrison Government has failed to deliver on a national EV strategy at every turn, we’re now seeing state governments go off half-cocked with half-baked policy.”