E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 23 AUGUST 2022

SUBJECTS: Black Spots; Road Safety; Electric Vehicles; Fuel Standards; Jobs and Skills Summit; Climate Change and Energy

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO, HOST: It's time to talk federal politics from a local angle. Alicia Payne is the Federal Member for Canberra and joins us on the line. Alicia, good morning.

ALICIA PAYNE MP, MEMBER FOR CANBERRA: Good morning, Stephen.

CENATIEMPO: Now you're chairing an ACT Black Spot Consultative Panel, are we talking about mobile phone black spots here or road black spots?

PAYNE: That's exactly what my staff said. No, it is road black spots. It's a national program that aims to identify the locations where there is a risk of road crashes, or there are a high level of road crashes. So I'm really pleased to have been appointed to chair a panel of local stakeholders who will consider nominations, including from the public or from the ACT government or other groups, to review locations where we think there are a lot of road crashes happening on ACT roads, or where there is a risk of them happening. And then, of course, we can make nominations for federal government funding to increase road safety at these locations through relatively small measures like adding roundabouts, signage, lighting, pedestrian access, these sorts of things. But it's been shown to reduce, on average, the incidence of crashes by around 30%.

CENATIEMPO: Which I think is great. But I think you're in the ACT, we need to go back to basics here and look at driver behaviour. I mean, yeah, it's all well and good to improve the roads. But I have this warning thing in my car that, it always amazes me when it goes off, it tells me when I'm approaching a high accident area. And I look at the road where I am and think how could this possibly be a high accident area? Clearly, idiots are involved, not necessarily the roads. Do we need to look take a broader approach and a broader look at road safety?

PAYNE: Well, I think obviously, road safety is really in everyone's interests. And road accidents, of course, can be absolutely devastating for people. So having that discussion about road safety is really important for reminding us to be as careful and sensible as we can on our roads.

CENATIEMPO: Yeah, I think you're right. Now the government's new electric vehicle strategy and this fuel standards policy, it kind of echoes what the industry has been saying. But I mean, the problem I see with it Alicia, is I've got no problem with encouraging people to buy electric cars or incentivizing them. But surely we're punishing the most vulnerable Australians, when effectively what we're doing is not making electric cars cheaper, but making petrol cars dearer.

PAYNE: So Chris Bowen has announced this week that we will start that discussion with industry about vehicle emission standards, and he'll be issuing a discussion paper, which will then be for consultation. But this is actually about making electric vehicles cheaper, it's not about putting any standards on consumers about what type of car they buy. But it's about putting the onus on international manufacturers to send Australia some of the more affordable options of electric vehicles. So at the moment, we are just getting the dregs really of the electric vehicle market internationally, because we have a low take up and there's no pressure on those large vehicle manufacturers to send the types of vehicles that will be more affordable. So this is about bringing those cars into Australia, and actually bringing down the price standard across the board.

CENATIEMPO: However, the problem with that is largely because well, yes, we have a low take up but we also are a very, very small market. And most of these manufacturers are in countries where they have obligations to provide their local markets before they provide vehicles to overseas markets. So I don't know how the Australian government, you can actually influence that.

PAYNE: Well, we do really need to lift our uptake of electric vehicles because we're currently on 2%, which is nearly five times lower than the global average. So we really do need the federal government to show leadership on this issue, which is  what we're doing. And there are many people who would love to drive an electric vehicle and simply can't afford it because even the cheapest of them are equivalent to quite an expensive petrol car, even if they're not a luxury vehicle. They are sort of in that price range. So this is about making electric vehicles more accessible for all Australians.

CENATIEMPO: Yeah, I hope you get the policy settings right because I mean what Chris Bowen has been talking about certainly isn't that. Now you're going to be facilitating a climate and energy mini jobs summit today. What's that all about?

PAYNE: Yeah, so obviously got the the federal government's Jobs and Skills summit next week. The big one. And we're having lots of smaller summits in the lead up to that, including local members of the government having them in their electorates around the country and the Canberra one is on Friday. But this one is one that Chris Bowen is hosting to give stakeholders a chance to discuss really the opportunities and the challenges to come from our transition into a lower carbon economy in the job sense. So, our Powering Australia Plan, our modelling shows that that will generate over 600,000 jobs. So this is about making sure that we make the most of that opportunity and bringing together a range of stakeholders from business, from unions, from renewable energy groups, across the board today in Canberra. And I'm really pleased that I've been able to have a role in that.

CENATIEMPO: Okay, so that's happening today and this will basically lead into the greater job summit in a couple of weeks time.

PAYNE: That's right.

CENATIEMPO: Alicia, appreciate your time.

PAYNE: Thanks very much.