How Anthony Albanese's latest laws will force countless Aussies to start driving electric cars - and the new rules begin within DAYS
Anthony Albanese 's plan to force Australians to drive an electric car is set to drive up the price of new cars by thousands of dollars and cost dealers $2billion in revenue.
Labor's New Vehicle Efficiency Standard comes into force on July 1 - with new penalties included for manufacturers that sell non-EV models.
The federal government's plan to reduce carbon emissions by 59 per cent over four years could substantially hurt Australia's 3,700 car dealers if the penalties are passed on to them.
A Centre for International Economics report for the Australian Automotive Dealer Association estimates Labor's plan could cost the industry between $1.1billion and $2.1billion from 2025 to 2029, with the potential to affect 68,493 jobs.
'Costs are likely to at least in part be passed on to dealers and customers,' the report said.
'Across all scenarios, dealers are expected to see a decline in profits from new car sales, primarily due to penalties for non-compliance and price drops in the case of full compliance.'
The government's NVES scheme would see credits given to car companies that sold more EVs but penalties imposed on manufacturers that sold a higher proportion of larger petrol and diesel utes and SUVs.
The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries estimated Labor's new laws would add $6,150 to the price of a Ford Ranger and $2,720 to a petrol-powered Toyota RAV4 SUV, but also reduce the price of a Tesla Model Y by $15,390.
The group's chief executive Tony Weber told Daily Mail Australia that motorists would end up paying more for petrol and diesel cars over the next four years.
'The regulation is designed to distort the market to get people to buy more efficient vehicles and if you don't buy that more efficient vehicle there's going to be penalties in the system,' he said.
'Those penalties will be borne by someone, most likely the consumer.
'We can safely assume - in the whole scheme of things - the increases in prices throughout the system ultimately will come to be borne by the motorist.'
The prospect of new rules, designed to encourage Australians to buy more fully-electric cars, is yet to translate into stronger EV sales.
The number of Tesla and Polestar EVs sold in Australia plunged by 45.4 per cent this year, when sales for January to May 2025 were compared with the first five months of 2024.
The data from the Electric Vehicle Council also showed 70.2 per cent plunge in year-to-data sales of the Tesla Model 3 with just 317 leaving the showroom last month.
That's only a fraction of the 1,958 sold in May 2024 and a far cry from 3,593 in February 2024 when the Model 3 was Australia's third most popular car behind the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux utes.
By comparison, 4,952 HiLuxes were sold last month, compared with 4,761 Rangers, even though these diesel utes both emit 200 grams of carbon per kilometre, making them targets under Labor's new emission-reduction laws.
Ford has this year introduced a plug-in hybrid Ranger ute that can tow 3.5 tonnes like a regular diesel model.
Chinese carmaker BYD is now the world's biggest producer of electric vehicles.
But it's yet to make the top ten list of Australian car brands.
Eight of the top ten marques on the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries sales chart offer a fully-electric car, including Toyota, Mazda, Ford, Kia, Hyundai, GWM, MG and Nissan.
Mitsubishi has plug-in hybrid SUVs while only Isuzu, the seller of the diesel-powered D-Max offers no fully electric vehicle in 2025, but an electric version of that ute is coming to Australia next year, as Toyota starts selling a fully-electric HiLux.
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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Patrick Dodson condemns decades of inaction on suicide hanging points in Australian prisons
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Despite this, Guardian Australia has revealed how obvious hanging points have been allowed to remain in prisons like Brisbane's Arthur Gorrie, where 10 hanging deaths occurred using the same type of exposed bars between 2001 and 2020, despite repeated, early coronial warnings that they be removed. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Even at the relatively new Darwin Correctional Centre, which opened in 2014, more than 20 years after the royal commission, cells were designed with an obvious and well-known hanging point, which was used in two hanging deaths in its first two full years of operation. The hanging point was not fully removed from cells until 2020. 'It's totally unacceptable and this is where people need to be empowered and take action against those agencies based on their duty of care,' Dodson told Guardian Australia. 'They have a duty of care. They've been told 30 years ago to get rid of these things.' Indigenous Australians remain vastly overrepresented in prison populations and hundreds have died in custody – 101 of those by hanging – since the 1991 royal commission. Official data shows the rate of Aboriginal hanging deaths is at a 17-year high, correlating with Australia's surging prisoner population. Guardian Australia revealed last week that in 2020, after the hanging death of young Indigenous man Tane Chatfield, the New South Wales government told a coroner it had audited Tamworth prison for hanging points but could find none. An independent inspection of Tamworth prison less than 12 months later found 'multiple hanging points' including some that had been purportedly removed. Guardian Australia asked every state government what has been done to address the problem. You can read their responses in full here. Dodson said the federal government, through the standing council of attorneys general, should take a national leadership approach on reforms that reduce Indigenous incarceration rates and reduce deaths in custody, including by removing hanging points. His voice adds to that of a group of crossbenchers, including David Pocock, David Shoebridge, Lidia Thorpe and Zali Steggall, calling for federal leadership on the issue of hanging points after the Guardian's investigation. Dodson said the federal government should establish a national Aboriginal justice commission to progress nationally coordinated reforms and ensure state governments are responding the recommendations of the 1991 royal commission, many of which remain unmet. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion He said the attorney general, Michelle Rowland, should ensure the issue is listed on the next agenda of the standing council of attorneys-general. 'The other thing that the attorney general should be doing is convening a group of the Aboriginal leadership in this space to discuss, have a discussion with them about the need for [an Aboriginal justice commission] and its importance,' he said. 'I think we need a structure, otherwise, where does it end, you know?' The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, Katie Kiss, said that the removal of hanging points from prison cells to reduce self-harm was a 'key recommendation' from the 1991 royal commission 'The failure to implement this – and all other – recommendations exacerbates the ongoing national shame that is Aboriginal deaths in custody,' she said. 'The treatment of our people, particularly when it comes to the administration of the justice system, is a deep stain on this country. They are being failed by an oppressive system that continues to deny their rights.' Kiss said 'immediate, tangible steps' must be taken to ensure that incarceration is a last resort, including investment in preventive measures to stop people from being detained in the first place and to ensure their safety and wellbeing if they are detained. 'We need to end this cycle of abuse, injustice, and trauma. In many cases, duty of care is not being administered – from the point of arrest, within police custody, in prisons, and detention facilities,' she said. 'People's lives are at stake and their human rights must be upheld.' A spokesperson for Rowland said any death in custody was a tragedy. The spokesperson said the attorney-general was working with her state and territory counterparts to 'accelerate progress on justice targets and achieve government commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap'. 'The Attorney-General strongly encourages state and territory governments to review their practices and continue to work toward effective solutions that ensure the safety and dignity of all Australians in the justice system,' the spokesperson said. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. Other international helplines can be found at
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
A two-bedroom Bondi Junction unit for $1,100 a week. Is ‘affordable housing' in Australia really affordable?
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'We need to make sure affordable housing is delivering genuine affordability. Failing to do so undermines community support for the concept, as well as failing to meet the housing needs of the community.' The rental asking price of many of the affordable homes currently advertised would also require tenants to part with more than 30% of their income. A one-bedroom apartment in Homebush in NSW which was listed for $600 a week, would cost a prospective tenant $31,285.71 annually. Single applicants can earn no more than $80,700, meaning more than 38% of their income would be spent on rent on the 'affordable' property. In Victoria, a one-bedroom fully furnished apartment in Caulfield marketed at 'hospitality and retail staff' is listed at $615 a week, which would be $32,068 annually. To be eligible, singles can make no more than $73,530, making the rent more than 43% of their income. The current advertisements follow another string of Bondi apartments recently advertised under the state's affordability program, with a two-bedroom two-bathroom flat listed for $1,300 a week. After Guardian Australia enquired about the two-bedroom property listed for $1,100, the rent was dropped to $1,040 a week. A spokesperson for HomeGround Sydney said the property could be rented for as much as $1,400 a week in the normal market. 'We recognise that when market rent is high in locations such as Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, even below-market affordable rents can seem high,' the spokesperson said. But 20% below market price 'makes it much more affordable for families to live close to where they work and go to school,' the spokesperson said As rents have surged by more than 30% in many parts of the country over the past three years, affordable housing programs are often marketed for essential workers or those making below $90,000 so they can live in their own communities. Managing Director of Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Michael Fotheringham said many of them offer affordability in name only, with no standardised definition of the term across jurisdictions in Australia. 'It's a really loose terminology that different state rules apply across the country, and we have both federal and state government investing in programs to deliver affordable housing,' he said. 'But what 'affordable housing' is, is really unclear.' In NSW, affordable properties should be rented out with a discount of 20% on the market rent, though the guidelines say 'flexibility in pricing may be applied to moderate income households'. 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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
A boring Trump meeting may be Albanese's G7 holy grail ahead of possible White House visit later this year
When Anthony Albanese met his Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, in Calgary on Sunday, the Australian leader came with an unusual gift. Along with an Akubra hat, Albanese presented Carney with framed memorabilia from the 1981 Australian film Gallipoli. Directed by Peter Weir, the war story is a favourite of the former central banker. The gift had been arranged with help from Canberra's National Film and Sound Archive. The pair had a friendly and constructive meeting, ahead of the G7 summit getting under way in nearby Kananaskis, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, on Tuesday, Australian time. Albanese and Carney will have scores of meetings with leaders from around the world. But for both, one event is dominating the agenda. Donald Trump, larger than life in any forum he steps into, landed in Canada on Monday afternoon, Australian time. With protests and civil unrest at home and a growing war in the Middle East, Trump might be forgiven for not spending much time worrying about Albanese. Trump wants Australia to lift its defence spending and will explain the Pentagon's review of the Aukus agreement. But even Australian officials on the ground are describing the talks as introductory and likely uncontroversial. That probably sounds good to Albanese too. Given the experience of leaders being berated in the Oval Office in recent months, boring may represent a huge success. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email One option being speculated about is Trump and Albanese holding more substantive talks in Washington DC sometime later in the year, possibly tied to a visit to the UN general assembly. Then Albanese could push for an exemption to Trump's trade tariffs and build a personal relationship with the mercurial US commander-in-chief. But whatever happens in the picturesque Kananaskis lodge, Albanese's gentle foreign policy pivot is playing out at this summit. Like Carney – who said Canada's old relationship with the US was 'over' – Albanese is strengthening key alliances away from Washington, to build trade and security buffers for an increasingly unreliable ally. Australia will hold negotiations on joining a defence agreement with the EU, and Albanese has hinted some of his visit, including a stopover in Fiji, was about pushing back on an expansionist China in the Indo-Pacific. He will meet the leaders of Japan and South Korea while in Canada, as well as the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, British prime minister, Keir Starmer, France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Friedrich Merz. In those closed-door talks, Albanese will talk about less Trump-friendly issues such as the war in Ukraine, Israel's continuing humanitarian blockade of Gaza, renewable energy, climate change and free trade ties. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Trump's unorthodox approach to governing will have anxiety levels high around the world for the remainder of his second term. Asked if Australia would 'stand shoulder-to-shoulder' in the event China invades Taiwan, or if he would raise such a possibility with Trump, Albanese said on Sunday that he would not pre-empt his discussions. The pair seem to be off to a good start. Shortly after Albanese was re-elected, Trump praised him, saying they had 'a very good relationship' and that Albanese had been nice to him. Like Carney, Albanese has shown signs of boldness in managing the Trump relationship. He has called the tariffs economically reckless, and angered the US by signing on to sanctions for two hard-right members of Israel's cabinet last week. After Carney presented him with a Stetson cowboy hat, the pair agreed the world becoming more dangerous under Trump meant closer ties were needed between Ottawa and Canberra, as evidenced by an official readout from the Canadian side. 'The prime ministers agreed to remain in close contact,' it said. Tom McIlroy is chief political correspondent for Guardian Australia
