{"id":628413,"date":"2026-04-24T18:45:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T18:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628413\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T18:45:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T18:45:20","slug":"crisis-drives-australias-ev-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628413\/","title":{"rendered":"Crisis drives Australia\u2019s EV revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of comparisons have been made with the 1979 oil price shock in recent weeks. The difference is that, in 1979, Australians had no choice but to absorb the shock. This time, many who can are quietly plotting their exit from petrol and diesel.<\/p>\n

Last month, electric vehicle sales in Australia reached a new record with about 15,000 vehicles sold \u2013 a 40 per cent jump on February. While still a minority of all new car sales, it shows that, as with the pandemic, the first responder to crisis in Australia is the household.<\/p>\n

The government will inevitably have to catch up. While the political instinct right now is rightfully to secure supply, the household instinct is to reduce dependence. The government has already done far better than even they probably thought possible to increase our stocks, but the next chapter of the story of this national crisis has to be a more resilient Australia. For the government, this will mean supporting even more households to make this transition.<\/p>\n

Despite the charlatan arguments for Australia to \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d and political window-dressing by the likes of the Crisafulli government in Queensland, that would be about the worst thing Australia could do right now.<\/p>\n

Besides the fact that drilling takes time to approve, explore and produce, it also requires federal approval, environmental assessments and infrastructure. As of last week, Queensland had still not made contact with the Commonwealth about its apparently urgent plans.<\/p>\n

Oil is priced on international markets, so more drilling does not insulate Australian households from price shocks. In other words, more drilling does not buy Australians cheaper petrol \u2013 it just changes who sells it.<\/p>\n

Take Norway, one of the world\u2019s top oil producers and Europe\u2019s largest outside of Russia. While the country consumes far less petrol and diesel than Australia, it is now down to only 20 days of reserves and people are bracing for restrictions the way Australia did just before Easter.<\/p>\n

By comparison, Australia now has about a month-and-a-half of petrol onshore and a month of diesel \u2013 more than we had when the strikes on Iran began.<\/p>\n

More EVs are already sold in Blacktown than Bondi … What this shows is that many in middle Australia are already moving as the economics stack up for them. Now\u00a0those who can are doing so with gusto \u2013 we just need\u00a0to make it the national story.<\/p>\n

The same polling that has been used to show Australians support more drilling also shows the same households want to wean themselves off the very resource it produces.<\/p>\n

The government should use its May budget to turn the page and begin to lay the groundwork for a new, longer-term resilience building phase as part of our national reckoning with this crisis.<\/p>\n

Of course, national resilience planning is always capital intensive. Yet we would be mad not to learn from this fossil fuel crisis and acknowledge that the more we can electrify everything, the more the likes of our \u201cstrategic wind reserves\u201d can actually be our source of national resilience and prosperity. These are the so-called reserves, incidentally, that Nationals leader Matt Canavan disparages as useless.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, the introduction of additional measures on the gas industry, especially on its windfall profits \u2013 no doubt carefully calibrated, including to avoid diminishing the government\u2019s leverage to secure quid pro quo supply for oil regionally \u2013 brings with it some extra fiscal wiggle room. Like oil, given the way gas is traded on international markets, this means the companies would have to eat into their enormous profits rather than passing such measures on to consumers.<\/p>\n

For example, while the early idea to wind back the EV tax credit was quickly dropped when petrol prices started to tick upwards, more needs to be done.<\/p>\n

The challenge is to make the benefits of things like EVs distributed and durable. Distributed in the sense that these benefits still largely benefit salaried professionals who can use things like novated leases to significantly reduce their upfront costs. Durable in the sense that until public charging infrastructure catches up and there is some kind of government-backed certificate for EV batteries, there will still be artificial caps on uptake, especially by those whose household budgets live and die on the petrol price.<\/p>\n

As Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen likes to say, however, more EVs are already sold in Blacktown than Bondi. Tesla\u2019s bestselling outlet used to be in Parramatta.<\/p>\n

What this shows is that many in middle Australia are already moving as the economics stack up for them. Now those who can are doing so with gusto \u2013 we just need to make it the national story. People are already watching the bowser tick up day by day, then going home and trying to work out how to ensure that never happens again. We need to help them build their own resilience.<\/p>\n

This has changed markedly even since the last oil price shock just before the global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008. At the time, EVs were effectively non-existent. The Tesla Roadster had just been launched globally and the Toyota Prius hybrid was still relatively expensive and therefore niche. There was also a complete lack of charging infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Yet just as EV technology has come of age, so too have other levers to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, like the cost of rooftop solar and battery storage. This is why the same story of middle Australia moving has quietly been playing out with the astonishing uptake of the government\u2019s Cheaper Home Batteries Program since it was implemented last July. With more than 250,000 subsidised units as of last month installed as part of the program, a review of the postcodes involved shows it is predominantly a story of uptake in outer metropolitan and regional Australia.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of policy design we need more of to continue to grow the constituency for climate action and renewable energy in Australia. It is about ideas that don\u2019t seek to preach but put more money back into the pockets of those who often have the least wiggle room to embrace the transition to a decarbonised economy. Things like EVs, rooftop solar and home batteries are just the tip of the spear \u2013 there is a lot more that can also be done in terms of energy efficiency and other options.<\/p>\n

While Australian households might be plotting a future without fossil fuels, so too must our trade balance sheet, in a way that works for everyone.<\/p>\n

This week, representatives from dozens of countries gathered in the Colombian coal export port city of Santa Marta to consider how to transition away from fossil fuels. Australia isn\u2019t represented there by a minister, but in our role as the head of the United Nations\u2019 COP31 negotiations we will need to play a part in stewarding this globally.<\/p>\n

Without ushering in a change to our exports, including through seizing the opportunities presented by things like green iron and other commodities produced with renewable energy at scale, as well as the clean tech itself and critical minerals, our economy risks falling off a cliff in the next few decades as the thirst for fossil fuels changes permanently.<\/p>\n

Any serious national resilience strategy must therefore also consider our longer-term prosperity, anchored in making the transition effective for the workers involved and the regional towns and centres at the heart of these industries. If there was ever a time to turbocharge the government\u2019s Future Made in Australia policy and anchor it in supporting these very regions, it is now.<\/p>\n

Any serious long-term national resilience strategy must consider our own vulnerability to the climate crisis, fuelled by fossil fuels. For many Australian households, this is manifesting as an insurance crisis, with 340,000 homes uninsured and more than a half a million more underinsured.<\/p>\n

Here, government underwriting deliberately, early and conservatively can make the difference for those who stand to lose everything. So can better incentivising and supporting household resilience upgrades to help avoid the lurch from one set of disaster recovery payments to another.<\/p>\n

As this crisis has already shown, Australians are not waiting for the energy transition \u2013 they are already hedging against it. Our challenge as a nation is how we do the same to build our overall national resilience and do so in a way that works for all, especially those in middle Australia.<\/p>\n

\n This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on
\n April 25, 2026 as “Australian households never waste a crisis”.<\/p>\n

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