Ulterior motive? Politicians struggling to see the EV light…

Recently, I became quite enraged when the Federal Government announced that it was thumbing its toffee nose at world’s best practice and telling us that giving people incentives to buy EVs is a bad idea.

I was so filthy, in fact, that I thought it wise not to open my laptop for a while, for fear I might drown the keys in spleen and bile and thus cause serious damage. But I’m calm now.

I mean, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise as its been their policy for some time.

So, our fossil-fuel-fancying, coal-coveting Government has once again shown that it has no interest in moving Australia towards an electric-vehicle future. Again.

As a Sky talking head with Bolts in his neck said after the last election: “To all those greenies out there, yes, this was a referendum on climate change – and you lost.”

What I want to know, what I simply cannot work out, is why?

In a previous life I worked in the political sphere in Canberra and very nearly took a job as a media advisor to a senior politician.

I got to study those strange creatures, close up, and I can tell you that what motivates nearly all of them is not a desire to improve their communities or make the world a better place (there are exceptions, obviously), it is a naked thirst for power and, in many cases, the kind of lazy attitude that makes you think it’s easier to get rich by taking bribes or getting greased up by corporations than it is to work hard.

Whatever you think of Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull, they are no fools, and they could have made a lot more money by staying out of politics, but power is, famously, an aphrodisiac. Just ask Melania.

Mostly, however, politicians are not hugely intelligent – it’s why they get caught in their grifting so often. I like to think I’m smarter than the average politician, but that’s not because I think I’m clever – I think my dog is smarter than Craig Kelly, or Pauline Hanson. And I don’t even like my dog.

But there is a level of cunning about them sometimes that would be admirable if it wasn’t so evil. The addiction that senior members of the government have to coal is simple enough to explain; their corporate donors have lots of money invested in it, so they will tell you the sky is blue, rather than an ugly smudge of smoggy brown, if it keeps the money rolling in.

Denying, or at very least pretending not to worry about climate change, is not a big step from helping out mining bigwigs with big pockets, it’s true. But what worries me is that the large number of happy-clapping Christians in senior government positions genuinely aren’t worried about rising temperatures or broiling seas, because they don’t have to.

They know they’re going to heaven, no matter what, and that anything and everything that happens here, from flood to famine to pandemic, is all just part of God’s plan anyway, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.

If that sounds crazy, then just pop down to your nearest pentecostal church and see what crazy looks like (our PM’s Horizon church is part of the pentecostal movement, which leaped out of the bosom of the US Bible Belt last century).

Yet I still don’t get why they’re not in favour of EVs? If car companies were big party donators, would it make sense? No, because globally the manufacturers have sniffed the wind and decided it shouldn’t smell like diesel fuel any more.

Giants like Ford are committing to an end to the internal-combustion engine (at least in Europe).

And Norway is a model of how governments can incentivise the take-up of EVs.

Local car company bosses have told me repeatedly that they’ve tried to get the politicians on board, to no avail. The clever car executives know something needs to be done, that we’re going to get left behind, and that they’ll be left with very few cars to sell, if we insist on sticking with Morrison’s Maxim that EVs are designed to destroy the Aussie weekend.

Do politicians just enjoy making us look stupid on the world stage? We’re smart enough to take on Google and Facebook, but we can’t see that Australians need to move to zero-emission motoring? How is this possible?

I just don’t get it. There has to be an angle, because politicians don’t act out of principle or philosophy, not unless there’s a solid personal interest involved. And being against EVs is just so obviously dumb and short sighted.

I’m beaten. Flummoxed. Perhaps someone could explain it to me?