Simon Colwell retweetledi
How Is That electric Truck Going?
A forestry company in South Australia just parked their electric truck after a two and a half year trial. It did not work. Not because the motor was no good but because it was not financially viable and the range was half of what was promised.
The managing director Wendy Fennell said it plainly. Diesel would need to get to over four dollars a litre at the bowser before electric even becomes comparable.
Now read that sentence again and think about it carefully.
Who controls the conditions that could make diesel four dollars a litre? The same government that has voted down domestic gas reservation legislation five times. The same government that watched our only oil refinery close without lifting a finger. The same government that has been selling down Australia's strategic fuel reserve. The same government that just handed seventy million dollars to Volvo to electrify the trucking fleet. And the same government whose energy policies have us rationing fuel right now while the rest of the world scrambles for alternatives we should have been producing ourselves years ago.
They do not need to ban diesel trucks. They do not need to legislate them off the road. They just need to make diesel expensive enough that the decision gets made for you. Every single policy this government has made on fuel, refining, gas and energy reserves pushes the price of diesel in exactly one direction.
And then they stand up and announce another seventy million dollars to fast track electric trucks and call it nation building.
It is not a conspiracy theory. It is a policy outcome hiding in plain sight. Make the alternative unviable by price and then ride in with the solution you wanted all along.
The Liberal and National opposition have said precisely nothing about any of this. As useless as "tits on a bull" while Australians pay record prices at the bowser, regional trucking companies park their electric experiments and the government gets quietly closer to the economic conditions it needs to force the transition it could not achieve on merit.
Wendy Fennell did everyone a favour this week. She said the quiet part out loud without realising it.
The question every Australian should be asking is who benefits when diesel hits four dollars a litre. Because it is not the forestry company parking their truck. And it is not the farmer filling up his header. And it is not the truckie trying to make a living carting goods across Australia.
But it suits this government down to the ground.
#BillyEdwards
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