The fear campaign about electric cars has hit a new level of utter shamelessness

The phoney election campaign reached a new peak of phoney political rhetoric on Tuesday when a government minister stood with voters and vowed to defend them when Bill Shorten came to take their cars away.

“We are going to stand by our tradies and we are going to save their utes,” said Small Business Minister Michaelia Cash.

Small Business Minister Michaelia Cash goes on the attack over electric cars.Credit: AAP

The absurd fear campaign about electric cars hit a new level of utter shamelessness.

Scott Morrison is now at risk of a Joe Hockey moment. The Prime Minister seems to have a visceral reaction against electric vehicles, much like how the former Treasurer hated the sight of wind turbines.

Yet there is no evidence Australians are worried about new technology. This is a nation of early adopters. Where are the votes in stopping progress?

The petrol hybrid engine, mocked as virtue signalling a decade ago, is now in almost every taxi.

The weakness in the Labor policy is that it is a target searching for a practical plan.

Consider at least three reasons why any government should want to encourage electric cars. They reduce oil imports and improve the nation’s trade balance. They reduce demand for petrol and therefore ease Australia’s relative shortage of reserves at domestic refineries. They deliver a strategic benefit by using domestic rather than imported energy.

Morrison risks losing voters in the sensible centre by issuing these shrill warnings. While he may think he is copying Labor’s tactics from the last election, the car market is not Medicare.

Neither major party actually has a policy to deal with the economic reality here. As electric cars become more competitive, the federal government will lose tax revenue from fuel excise. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates this will cost $5.5 billion a year by 2040.

The obvious problem is that those who cannot afford an electric car have to keep paying the excise. This will probably hurt those on lower incomes. How is that fair?

Neither major party has an answer on how to replace the excise with road user charging. The Coalition talked about this for the last three years and now finds it easier to yell about utes instead.

The weakness in the Labor policy is that it is a target searching for a practical plan. How can Labor achieve its objective? It will not say.

Without policy change, electric vehicles will make up 22 per cent of new car sales by 2030, according to a report commissioned by the government.

The onus is on Labor to explain how it would change existing policies to reach 50 per cent instead – and what it would do to replace fuel excise.

For electric cars to become the norm, Australia will need more charging stations at massive expense.

The key point is that Labor does not say it will mandate electric vehicles. This may disappoint Cash, but nobody will be dragged from their Ford Rangers.