Nationals MP Damian Drum hails ‘war on emissions’

Nats MP Damian Drum says Australia will need to impose road-user charges on electric vehicle drivers, aggressively pursue offshore wind power and convert service stations to charging hubs.

Nationals MP Damian Drum. Picture: AAP

Nationals MP Damian Drum says Australia will need to impose road-user charges on electric vehicle drivers, aggressively pursue offshore wind power and convert service stations to charging hubs.

The Nationals chief whip, who recently returned from Britain after attending the COP26 Glasgow summit, said it was time for the world to focus on the “war on emissions and not a war on fossil fuels”.

After pushing for a net-zero emissions by 2050 target inside the Nationals party room, Mr Drum is calling for annual reviews, taking a “similar approach to Closing the Gap”, testing the impacts of net zero on regional communities.

To secure a deal with the Nationals, Scott Morrison committed to five-yearly socio-economic reviews conducted by the Productivity Commission.

“We’re going to get there without hurting our people. We need to set the markers, put the watchdog in place and make sure this is positive. If we find there’s a cohort that’s getting smashed, we need to address that. There may be consequences that are totally unintended,” Mr Drum said.

Mr Drum, who joined Liberal Senator Dean Smith and Nationals colleagues Kevin Hogan and Ross Cadell as part of the Coalition for Conservation delegation at COP26, said Australia must embrace climate action or face economic risk as capital markets and trading partners shifted.

“Right now we’re already being penalised because some of these big lending institutions see us as a risk. The other one is our trading partners. As we trade there’s going to be a whole range of sanctions that will be coming at us if we weren’t committed.”

With governments using fuel excise to pay for road infrastructure, Mr Drum said we will have to “find those monies from somewhere” as car manufacturers shifted to low-emissions vehicles.

“You look at a future in Australia where if we move to more EVs, which undoubtedly we will, people that are driving EVs will have to be paying some sort of road tax,” he said.

“I think most of the people that are driving EVs are looking the other way, they’re suggesting that maybe we should be getting rewarded by government. In reality, they’re going to get slugged an additional road tax.”

The Nicholls MP said Australia would be a “huge beneficiary of offshore wind”, which had become a key energy source for European nations.

“We’ve got some of the world’s best opportunities for offshore wind where you don’t have communities and farmers being upset,” Mr Drum said. “Whereas onshore wind runs at about 30 per cent capacity, offshore wind runs at about 55-60 per cent capacity – so twice as effective. And the blades turnover about 95 per cent of the time.”

He flagged the need to prepare Australians for the shift to EVs and working out what the “replacement of our petrol stations look like into the future”.

“Who’s going to provide 30 electrical banks?” he said.

“The other technology is the one battery in, one battery out. A bit like a Gas and Go.”