PM at odds with Thailand on emissions

Anthony Albanese has disagreed with Thailand at the ASEAN-Australia summit in Melbourne.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand Srettha Thavisin at the 2024 ASEAN Summit.

Anthony Albanese has disagreed with Thailand at the ASEAN-Australia summit in Melbourne by saying Labor’s new vehicle efficiency standard was never raised in his bilateral meeting with Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin.

The Thai readout of the meeting stated that Mr Thavisin had asked for the new vehicle efficiency standard – dubbed a “ute tax” by the Coalition – to be introduced “gradually” rather than simply flicking the switch on the policy in 2025.

The Prime Minister on Wednesday said “there was no request – I had a bilateral meeting”.

He said there had been a “big scare campaign” against the Labor policy being promoted by the ­Coalition in the lead-up to the Dunkley by-election.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will on Thursday defend the new car pollution standards as a cost-savings measure, arguing that the ­Coalition refusal to implement efficiency targets back in 2016 had resulted in Australians spending $4bn more in fuel.

In a speech to the Smart Energy Council on Thursday, he will say that the Liberals were “right when they argued all through 2016 and 2017 that efficiency standards would reduce the amount of money that Australians pay for petrol. It was seven years ago this week the previous government finished consultation on their fuel efficiency standard – exactly the same point we are at now.

“Australians have since wasted around $4bn unnecessarily on fuel because the Liberal Party didn’t have the courage to stick to a policy they knew was right.”

A Draft Regulation Impact statement prepared in 2016 under the then Coalition government by the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development found that the growth in the light vehicle fleet would add an estimated eight million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and an estimated $5bn in energy costs to the economy per annum by 2030.

Government sources said the $4bn figure – calculated by Mr Bowen’s office – was conservative because it was based on the assumption fuel stayed at $1.30 a litre since 2016.

Mr Bowen said the new vehicle efficiency standard would “save motorists $12bn in fuel costs by 2030, and $108bn by 2050. (The Coalition) was wrong to abandon the policy and wrong to engage today in a pathetic scare campaign against a policy they embraced just a few years ago.”