Dr WOODRUFF – Minister, you have rested a substantial part of what you have talked about as your Governments response to bringing down emissions in Tasmania on electric vehicles and I questioned the Treasurer about how we were going with our commitments and where we have got to.
What we have got to is a commitment in 2021-22 to have 50 electric vehicles and by your words there was in the order of 13 actually added to the fleet, we have a target for 2022-23 of 75 vehicles, by your words, on order. As I clarified yesterday from Mr Terry there are 21 or some number like that which are in the pipeline. You are woefully under meeting your targets. The 2030 target, can you tell the committee, because the budget papers talk about electric vehicles as being a plug in and they do not include non-plugin.
Mr JAENSCH – They do.
Dr WOODRUFF – No, the Budget papers say electrical vehicles do not include non-plugin. In other word Hybrids aren’t an electric vehicle. Hybrids are a fantastic way to reduce emissions, they are not an electric vehicle. Can you confirm for the committee the 2030 target of the government fleet being fully electric vehicles will not include hybrid vehicles and will also include the vehicles used by our GBEs?
Mr JAENSCH – I will ask Mr Voss to give you the Treasury answer as being the part of government directly responsible for delivering this. You will see in the budget papers what our ambitions are, we do note and from the briefings I have had, there are significant delays in the pipelines for delivering electric vehicles at the moment, which we need to take into account. What we are also likely to see is as we progress towards 2030 and our target date, electric vehicles of different kinds and configurations will become more available. We need to work through a process of replacing our fleet as the existing liquid-fuel vehicles reach the end of their lease arrangements or their economic life with us.
This is work that Treasury is doing, based on constraints in the supply and getting new vehicles to Australia and Tasmania, on one hand, and our strategy for moving out of vehicles of one type and replacing them with others. I'll ask Mr Voss to refer to the makeup of the profile of that fleet.
Mr VOSS - I can confirm the target does not include non-plug-in hybrid vehicles. In the budget papers, in footnote 5, it's quite clear:
Electric vehicles includes battery-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. It does not include non-plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Dr WOODRUFF - So the hybrids that have been talked about are non-plug-ins, the hybrid vehicles that we've had the numbers for?
CHAIR - Sorry, colleagues, we will adjourn for lunch now because we are already over time. We will return at 2 p.m.