Peter Dutton is determined to make EVs more expensive for all as climate charade goes up in coal smoke | Opinion

It must be tricky being Peter Dutton, and not just because he currently has to spend an hour in front of the mirror each morning trying to work out what a smile is supposed to look like. 

Apparently, according to an illuminating profile I read of him recently, illustrated with a picture of him looking like someone who’s teeth have been cemented into a rictus green but who’s eyes still shout “HATE”, Dutton is an intelligent man. 

That means he can surely accept that climate change is real, that electric vehicles are a good idea and should be promoted and encouraged by governments, that wind turbines should be built and that nuclear energy is the answer to all our energy problems in the same way that “I’m old and will be dead soon” is the answer to climate change (sure, you like your grandkids, but not enough to pay 5c more for fuel so they don’t have to hide inside from a Revenge of the Sith scene of a planet.)

The problem is that he wants to be Prime Minister and he knows who his voters are, and who they used to be but are no longer; ie Teal types.

Unfortunately, I know a lot of his voters, too, and I can tell you that if he’d answered that question in the debate about whether he believed in climate change honestly, rather than saying he’d leave it up to the scientists, who have already made up their minds by the way, they would have hated him for it.

These voters are old, rich, soft and not for changing. They are of the “bah, it’s always been hot” brigade and will not give up smoking diesels nor cigarettes. They hate wind turbines not because they are ugly but because they represent change and they think coal-fired power stations are just fine.

They are the same voters who, in America, loved and cheered when Trump promised to fight back against the planet he lives on, sorry, no, the climate change hoax. And let’s not forget that a survey during that election showed  that 40 per cent of Australian voters “back the idea of increasing oil and gas production after Trump pledged to ‘drill, baby, drill’ to find more fuel”.

Is it possible that figures like that encouraged Dutton to call Trump a “great thinker” not long ago, when he suggested turning Gaza into a Trump Vegas?

In light of all this, it was not so surprising when Dutton flip-flopped this week on a popular tax break for EV drivers, guaranteeing that electric cars would be more expensive under his government.

Introduced by the Albanese Government in 2022, the initiative means that if a person buys an EV priced under the luxury car tax threshold through a novated lease program via their employer they do not have to pay fringe benefits tax (FBT) – even if the car in question is only for personal use.

An analysis by Guardian Australia found the exemption could save the owner of a  Tesla Model Y (do they still exist?) about $10,000 over four years, depending on their earnings.

On Monday, a reporter asked Dutton if he would keep the scheme running and he said, let’s be very clear, YES. Or rather, when asked if we could scrap it he said: “No, we’ve said that what we’re opposed to is the government’s big tax on hybrids.” 

By that he meant he would scrap penalties imposed on vehicles that exceeded CO2 limits imposed under Australia’s new NVES scheme. Not that his justification for doing so actually held any water, or that vehicles pumping out too much CO2 would necessarily ever pay a cent in fineds anyway, as my colleague Toby Hagon explains here.

Anyway, having madehis position clear, Dutton then allowed himself to bathe in the plaudits as people like the EV Council praised him for making the issue a bipartisan winner. “This will mean Australians can continue to access cost-of-living relief by shifting to cleaner, more affordable cars. It is clear both major parties recognise the importance of this policy in cutting the cost of living for all Australians.”

Two days later, however, he put an unsightly leotard on and performed a full backflip, announcing that his Government would “unwind Labor’s taxpayer-funded and badly designed electric car subsidies, saving upwards of $3bn over the forward estimates and $23bn over the medium term”.

This caused people in the industry to feel about Dutton the way I do every day. Polestar’s Australia managing director, Scott Maynard, said: “The Coalition’s decision to remove fringe benefits tax exemptions for electric vehicles demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the significant cost-of-living, climate and health benefits of EVs.”

Dutton then had a fine old time pretending to be Trump by saying journalists were just confused about what he meant when he said yes, or no, or fake news. “I think we’re better off just to accept we have a difference of opinion, but there’s been no change in policy,” he grumbled.

The fact is, Dutton probably was in favour of the exemption on Monday, but like all politicians he’s about as attached to any policy as he is to telling the truth, or apologising to the stolen generations, or the Lebanese community. 

No doubt he copped an earful from his pollsters, his colleagues – particularly the real climate haters in the National Party – and his constituents and was forced into the backdown, flip flop, whopping lie, call it what you will.

What is absolutely and increasingly certain is that Dutton and the Coalition are bad for the environment, anti-EVs and anti-renewables. Or, as climate experts put it this week, the Coalition’s  “policies would boost local fossil fuel use, send the country backwards on emissions, put the net zero goal beyond reach and damage its reputation internationally”.