Vikki Campion: What happened to Anthony Albanese’s pre-election promises?

The federal government’s EV policy is big on gloss, low on details, and pitched to dupe the customer on the fine print. It also fails to handle fire risks that experts warn of, writes Vikki Campion.

It’s a year to the week since then-aspiring PM Anthony Albanese hopped around aged care homes toting a rattan basket of Easter eggs before a fawning press pack with more promises than the shopping channel.

Cheaper power, lower debt, lower cost of living, zero emissions, and a 24/7 registered nurse in every aged care facility.

It all seemed too good to be true and, like the buff body with a six-pack that advertises grandma’s dust-gathering exercise machine under the bed, it was.

Instead, not-for-profit, community-run and commercial, aged care facilities are closing their doors, unable to find registered nurses to keep them open from July 1.

The $275 cheaper power bill promise has vanished from Labor’s sites and speeches.

And the electric vehicle strategy released on Thursday lacks any coherent safety plan.

Pre-election promises about 24/7 registered nurses “because it is the right thing to do” were political advertising gimmicks, more hollow than Albanese’s Easter egg offering.

Anthony Albanese and partner Jodie Haydon spreading Easter joy at Bolton Clarke Fairways Retirement Living and Residential Aged Carelast year. Picture: Toby Zerna

His experimentalism has resulted in Australia going backwards, a workforce gap of 8400 registered nurses and 13,300 personal care workers, forcing homes to close as they can’t abide by the new policy.

On the anniversary of his Easter bunny hop, an 82-year-old lady recovering from a broken hip in a country NSW base hospital who is afraid of being alone was told to go home to recover as the system frantically tries to find spaces for the hundreds of aged care residents who need somewhere new to go following the closures of aged care homes.

An assessment for if she can get a now-coveted spot in a local aged care home is up to six months away.

Albo’s demand for registered nurses has not improved the quality of aged care facilities but closed them, and the lady recovering from a broken hip is being told to go home to watch the cost of the aged care sector soar up to $5bn, her power bill go up, and a distracted federal government flogging electric cars on its political shopping channel.

Labor’s slogan about taking $275 off your power bill has morphed into “We’re investing in renewable energy”.

Instead of junk gimmicks under the bed, we have junk technology littered over the countryside, with more to come.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.

Chris Bowen’s long-awaited national electric vehicle strategy is not so much a policy document as a glossy brochure advertising electric cars in large teal font and pictographs.

The EV catalogue is ideally suited for the political shopping channel, big on gloss, low on details, and pitched to dupe the customer on the fine print. It fails to handle the jet-flame safety risks that emergency personnel warned Mr Bowen of.

There is not a single mention of the 60,000 litres it takes to drown an EV fire — which, for context, is about equal to the rural home water tank capacity expected to get a family through a few years of drought.

There is no reference to the Tesla megapack fire near Geelong, where a 13-tonne lithium battery was engulfed, requiring more than 150 firefighters to put it out.

Battery fires featured prominently in the consultation but do not feature in the 47-page EV brochure, save for three paragraphs weakly suggesting we cannot “ignore the potential for EV battery electric shocks or fire-related incidents” and buck-passing any details on to the Department of Transport and the ACCC.

The Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council, representing 288,000 firefighters and emergency workers, told Bowen’s consultation for the EV strategy that the risks of a failure event of a lithium-ion EV battery have the potential to lead to a thermal runaway event, potentially including “high voltage direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC) electricity, toxic and flammable vapour production, vapour cloud explosion, toxic smoke production, rapid rate of fire spread, unrecognised heat release rate and unknown temperature fluctuations, highly directional and jet-like flames, exothermic chemical reaction-fuelled fire that cannot be extinguished, significant fire duration (four-plus hours) and protracted incident, proximity of adjacent fuel loads such as other vehicles and building elements and potential for secondary ignition”.

As they are retrofitting electric vehicle charging stations in the basements of apartment blocks, fireys called for the development of “stringent security and safety standards relating particularly to EV charging infrastructure”.

Surely some discerning person within the government thought putting new hazards into the bottom of apartment blocks carries risks, or do we wait for the tragedy before we fix it, as we did with flammable building cladding?

The late-night shopping channel has been reconfigured as a backbench government MP social media post as they flog off Chinese electric utes to the public, an engineering marvel stripped of key safety features that you too can purchase for $93,000, for which a 2WD range is limited to 150km fully-loaded — and less if you wish to have airconditioning.

While car reviewers have given it a 3.5/10 safety rating, MPs-turned-car salesmen give it a thumbs up, though not one has ever been spotted in an MP’s carparking spot.

Election promises are the ultimate buy now, pay later scheme with no warranty or 30-day return.

This government’s premier policies are currently getting shelved under the bed with other late-night shopping gimmicks to gather dust.