Albanese-Chalmers-Bowen government has taken a wrong turn with its new EV policy

The Albanese-Chalmers-Bowen government’s so-called ‘Fuel Efficiency Standard’ is a classic example of Orwellian Newspeak that has nothing to do with real fuel efficiency.

The minister for destroying Australia’s electricity and indeed broader energy system also wants to destroy your ability to drive the cars and SUVs and most especially dual-cab diesels that you want.

That is to say, the vehicles that actually, well, work.

And further, work REALLY efficiently. As contrasted with the electric vehicles that he’s embarked on forcing into your garages and car spaces; and that ‘work’ exactly as ‘efficiently’ as wind and solar for (not) generating electricity.

The said minister – who in all honesty, I have to say, has been making an impressive grab for the accolade of quite the stupidest who has ever been given the Crown’s accreditation in one-and-a-quarter centuries of Federation – is doing so via a (very big) Little Lie in and among the Big Lie of “doing something about climate change”.

This is the Albanese-Chalmers-Bowen government’s so-called “Fuel Efficiency Standard”.

It’s a classic example of Orwellian Newspeak – also, cloaking the fundamental stupidity, and dishonesty, of the Albanese government collectively and the Energy Destruction minister Chris Bowen in particular.

It has nothing - zero, zip, nada – to do with real ”fuel efficiency”, which any half-cognisant person would regard as the efficiency of the fuel used. That is to say, how many kilometres you get out of each litre or litre-equivalent of the fuel used.

No, it’s all and only about how much CO2 (carbon dioxide) it emitted from a vehicle, or fleet of vehicles. You emit less CO2, you are defined as more “fuel efficient”.

It is of course a blatant, dishonest, and should be, quite embarrassingly inept, exercise in rigging the answer.

A Tesla at a charging station. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

Obviously, vehicles using petrol or diesel are therefore “fuel inefficient” because they emit CO2.

Electric vehicles are defined as the ultimate in “fuel efficiency” because they DIRECTLY emit zero CO2.

Never mind they are anything but fuel efficient – in the only sense that matters: how much energy they really use to cover the same 500km as, say, a diesel SUV, pulling the same load.

Never mind, that they are actually DOUBLY fuel inefficient - even under the Bowen definition – because 60 per cent of their electricity comes from coal-fired, CO2-emitting, power stations.

This all plays into the core, pervasive deception of this government’s claim that “the market” will choose and driven the investment in future energy; and that will, as a consequence, be essentially wind and solar.

You rig the playing field. If you emit CO2 you are defined as inefficient and prohibited. We then leave the market to choose between what’s left. Except of course, the market is not allowed to choose nuclear.

Now, true, bluntly, the market would NOT choose nuclear – either under the Bowen rules or where we still operated as a society somewhere close to national and individual sanity.

This is because of all the black, green and red tape thrown to prevent – and render prohibitively expensive – anything with the word ‘nuclear’ in it.

I remind readers, that 35 years on, we still don’t have even the selection of the site for the low grade nuclear waste disposal facility.

Good luck on a power station.

Originally published as Albanese-Chalmers-Bowen government has taken a wrong turn with its new EV policy