By Jo Nova

Labor wants the poor to subsidize the rich EV car buyers

Good news: The conservative opposition has promised to reduce the fines to zero for car manufacturers who sell “too many” diesel and petrol cars. This effectively negates the New Vehicle Emissions Standards (NVES), even though the Coalition says they will keep the standards (whatever that means).

As standards were racheted up the fines could be as much as $25,000 on the largest utes and 4WDs.

For a nation of petrol-heads, it’s amazing this diabolical policy hasn’t sparked outrage, probably only because it was buried in complexity.  An honest government would have added a fee or a tax directly onto the kinds of cars they didn’t want sold — they could call it a pollution tax to cover the cost of the damage. The reason the Labor Government didn’t do that is because the unwashed masses would be revolting in the streets. So they make a rule that manufacturers have to sell a certain percentage of “good cars” that make future weather nicer (in theory),  and then they can tell abject lies to the public saying “it’s up to the car companies” and “manufacturers don’t have to pass the costs on” — as if any profit making entity can absorb fines of millions without raising prices.

The sole point of the NVES was to punish petrol and diesel car buyers and subsidize EV manufacturers, and pretend the government was not doing the taxing and subsidizing because the money didn’t pass through any bureaucrats hands, even though the sole cause of the money flow was indeed the government.

By Greg  Brown, Sarah Elks, and Joanne Panagopoulis, The Australian

The Coalition will abolish fines for car companies who breach targets under Australia’s first ­vehicle emissions standards scheme, in a major election commitment aimed at taking down the Albanese government’s claim that the price of petrol cars will not increase under Labor’s policy.

The Australian can reveal the Coalition will retain the New Vehicle Emissions Standards, but will not punish companies financially that do not meet the tough carbon goals. Coalition ­sources said the policy, to be announced during the campaign, has the backing of the sector.

Companies that miss the yearly target need to pay heavy fines or buy credits from suppliers that overperform, with industry modelling predicting car suppliers will be on the hook for $2.7bn of fines by the end of the decade.

The effect of the pseudo car tax would be to limit sales of petrol and diesel cars by raising their prices, while reducing EV car prices — a policy that takes money from the poor in the outer suburbs and country areas in order to subsidize cars bought by inner city rich people.

Peter Dutton needs to find short one-liner ways to sell this policy because it’s a vote winner.

The neutered NVES is barely an aspirational fantasy goal without the fines. Presumably the opposition decided to keep it so the Labor Party couldn’t hit them so easily with one-liners that “Liberals don’t care about pollution”. Even though the NVES is purely about CO2 emissions, which are an asset to a dry agricultural nation. The Coalition should axe the NVES entirely. Petrol and diesel drivers help feed the poor.

In the UK, the same sort of rules were already in place, and due to the awful consequences on the car industry, even the untouchable Keir Starmer Government, years away from the next election, is already cutting fines by 20% and exempting British manufacturers like McLaren, Aston Martin and Bentley. Fines in the UK were as high as £15,000 per car, and set to get worse. The UK government has also added in all kinds of what they call “flexibilities” to keep the illusion that they are not back-tracking, while finding excuses to reduce the penalties. But of course, flexibilities are Soviet style complexities that means everyone needs more lawyers and accountants and more bureaucrats. It still feeds The Blob. It’s not the free market that brought the mass production of cheap cars to the unwashed masses in mere decades.

Complexity helps the rich and punishes the poor, it just hides it better. The opposition should wage a war against these deceptive schemes. All the same outcomes could be achieved through honest simpler tax plans. Only liars and cheats want to dupe the voters with hidden subsidies that help the rich.