Australian Politics
Why new engine emission rules quietly introduced just before Christmas will change Australia's most popular utes, SUVs and 4WDs forever
This will cause outrage in the country. Country people need their large utes
Australia's bestselling cars like the Toyota HiLux ute, popular SUVs and giant American pick-up trucks will become a thing of the past under new laws mandating strict emission standards.
Transport Minister Catherine King last week announced new cars sold from December 2025 - including four-wheel drives and utes - would be required to comply with European 'noxious emissions standards'.
The pollution-slashing move could force manufacturers to sell European versions of their bestselling cars in Australia to comply with the new Euro 6d rules - meaning fully electric or hybrid versions.
Next generation light cars, SUVs and commercial vehicles being introduced in Australia from December 2025 will all have to comply with the Albanese government's strict climate change requirements.
Existing production models will be allowed to be sold until 2028, but would then be banned unless the petrol or diesel engines were replaced with modern versions that emitted less carbon.
In a statement, Minister King said: 'Following thorough consultation with industry and the community, new versions of new cars – including SUVs and light commercial vehicles – sold from December 2025 will need to comply with Euro 6d noxious emissions standards.'
Cars would pass this rule if they produced less than 162 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, based on the vehicles that have complied with the Euro 6d rules in the EU.
That would mean the Toyota HiLux, Australia's tradie favourite, would no longer be available as a just a petrol or diesel.
Australia's bestselling car overall in 2023 produces 210 grams for every kilometre.
The Ford Ranger - Australia's bestseller during six months of this year - emits 202 grams of CO2 per kilometre.
But next year, Toyota is introducing a hybrid HiLux in Australia while Ford from 2025 be selling a plug-in hybrid version of the Ranger.
Several SUVs fall foul of the Euro 6d rule, including even the small Mitsubishi ASX, with Australian Automobile Association testing showing it produced 186 grams of CO2 per kilometre.
The Hyundai Tucson produced 164g/km while the MG ZS, a regular in the monthly top ten, emitted 174g/km, the same test showed.
The Toyota LandCruiser's future would be in doubt as a large four-wheel drive without a hybrid version, because it puts out 253 grams of carbon per kilometre, a separate analysis by the National Transport Commission found.
The six-metre long Ford F-150 American pick-up truck emits 256 grams of carbon a kilometre, which means it would only survive if the fully-electric Lightning version was imported into Australia.
The EV versions of the Dodge RAM and Chevrolet Silverado would also have to come to Australia to continue being sold at dealerships.
Private imports of even larger pick-up trucks, like the Ford F-350, could also be in jeopardy under these new rules.
But medium hybrid cars like the Toyota RAV4 would pass for now, with this SUV emitting 111 grams per kilometre.
The 2.0 litre petrol version would also get through with Australian Automobile Association testing showing it emitted 155 grams of carbon per kilometre.
Some hatchbacks, however, could be in danger with a late model Hyundai i30 emitting 172 grams per kilometre.
The Toyota Corolla hybrid produced 97 grams per kilometre, compared with 139 grams for the petrol version.
The typical car sold just two years ago would fail to pass the new emission rules.
The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics estimated new vehicles sold in Australia in 2021 emitted 173.6 grams of carbon per kilometre on average, down from 181 grams in 2019.
By comparison, the typical new European car produced 115 grams of CO2/km compared with 169 grams in the US.
A National Strategy on Energy Efficiency in 2009 recommended the introduction of CO2 emission standards for light vehicles.
It is the second measure the Albanese government has introduced in a matter of weeks to crack down on hybrids and less fuel-efficient cars.
The government announced earlier this month that from July 1, 2025, a car selling for more than $76,950 will incur the luxury car tax unless it used less than 3.5 litres for every 100km.
That means a Lexus RX 350h front-wheel drive hybrid, priced from $87,500, would incur a 33 per cent for every dollar above the $76,950 threshold - adding up to $3,481.50 - because it used more than five litres per 100km.
The existing rule allows cars to escape the luxury car tax threshold if they use less than seven litres per 100 kilometres. The new measure is designed to push Australians to consider electric cars.
Like Australia, the EU has a net zero by 2050 target. But unlike Australia, the European Parliament in February passed a law banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035.
Even if Australia doesn't copy this approach, large four-wheel drives and utes face extinction within five years unless they are sold as hybrids or fully-electric cars.
From January to November, Australia's three bestsellers - the Toyota HiLux (55,968 sales), Ford Ranger (55,589 sales) and Isuzu D-Max (28,369 sales) - were all available as a diesel.
The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries data also had the LandCruiser at No.7 for the year to date with 24,055 sales.
The fully-electric Tesla Model Y, however, outsold it with 27,418 sales.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12905681/Ute-ban-Australia-engine-emission-rules.html
******************************************************‘Short-Sighted’: Peak Body Criticises Decision to Ban Oil, Gas Development in Lake Eyre Basin
A peak industry association representing Queensland’s minerals and energy producers has criticised the state government for banning new oil and gas development in the country’s largest drainage basin.
The ban came a few days after Queensland Premier Steven Miles assumed the position of the state's leader following the resignation of predecessor, Annastacia Palaszczuk.
Under the ban, the Queensland government will prohibit all future oil and gas production in the Lake Eyre Basin's rivers and floodplains.
However, the ban will not cover existing approved conventional gas developments, and holders of existing petroleum exploration permits can apply for a production lease until Aug. 30, 2024.
Lake Eyre Basin is one of the largest drainage basins in the world. It covers an area of 1.2 million square kilometres, including parts of Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and New South Wales.
Large tracts of the Basin is considered arid, supporting just 60,000 people, with the major land use (82 percent) being for low-density grazing.
It is also well-known for containing significant oil and gas resources.
Following the announcement, Queensland Resources Council CEO Ian Macfarlane criticised the state government for not considering the social and economic impact of preventing further expansion of Australia’s gas reserves.
“Reports this week indicate Australia’s East Coast is facing another gas shortage over the next few years and will rely on Queensland producers to ensure supply to millions of homes and businesses,” he said in a statement.
“Less supply means higher gas prices for Australians already struggling with cost-of-living pressures.
“Unless governments are prepared to allow and support new gas projects to be developed, not only will energy prices continue to climb, but southern states are going to run out of gas.”
The CEO noted that the decision was a blow to the energy sector, which had engaged in good faith with the Queensland government and other stakeholders and was willing to work with them to maintain the highest standards to protect the environment.
“The Queensland gas industry has developed alongside agriculture and other regional industries over the past six decades, supporting regional communities, and providing a benefit to all Queenslanders,” he said.
“There is no reason why the gas industry can’t continue along the same regulated and sustainable path that provides new opportunities for the communities of South West Queensland.”
Mr. Macfarlane also believed the ban would create more policy uncertainty for the resources sector and hinder new investments while impacting the livelihood of local communities relying on oil and gas extraction.
Mr. Macfarlane's remarks come after a June report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission indicated that Australia’s southern states would likely experience a gas shortfall in 2024.
The consumer watchdog warned that the shortfall risk would remain unless there was considerable transport and storage capacity to deliver Queensland’s surplus gas to those states.
Queensland Government’s Response
Meanwhile, Mr. Miles said the new policy would protect the Lake Eyre Basin for future generations of Queenslanders.
“The changes strike a good balance in preserving the Queensland Lake Eyre Basin region while providing industry with the tools they need to grow and develop,” the premier said in a statement.
Echoing the sentiment, Queensland Environment Minister Leanne Linard highlighted the importance of preserving the Basin.
“Maintaining clean and uninterrupted flow of the waterways in the basin is critical to the survival of the wildlife and the businesses and communities in the region,” she said.
“The Miles government is committed to the ongoing preservation of the ecological and cultural values in the rivers, watercourses and floodplains of the Queensland Lake Eyre Basin and First Nations Peoples’ connection to the land.”
Environmentalist group Lock The Gate welcomed the ban and hoped to see more similar policies from the government.
“Unconventional oil and gas extraction can require thousands of wells to be drilled across a landscape, with each well requiring millions of litres of water for a single frack,” Lock the Gate Alliance national coordinator Ellen Roberts said.
“This sort of development would have decimated the fragile and unique rivers and floodplains of the Channel Country. It would have pushed out existing sustainable industries and wreaked havoc on cultural sites.”
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Labor’s family law changes ‘go too far’, says Michaelia Cash
The Coalition is preparing to revamp the Family Law Act to undo Labor’s overhaul amid concern the changes “send a very disturbing message” to Australian families.
The Weekend Australian can reveal the opposition is looking to repeal Anthony Albanese’s changes to family law – including the removal of the presumption of shared parenting in court disputes – if it wins the next election.
Opposition workplace relations spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said Labor’s changes go too far and “simply do not make sense”.
“Labor’s changes to the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility simply do not make sense,” Senator Cash said.
“This was a rule which said that, unless it is unsafe, the starting point is to presume that children benefit where both parents are involved in major decisions about their lives.”
The government last month passed laws to abolish the presumption of shared parental responsibility, which direct a court to apply the presumption that it is in the best interests of a child for the parents to have equal shared responsibilities.
The new laws also slash from 15 to six the “best interest” considerations used by courts when deciding the best parenting arrangements for a child.
But Labor’s changes were criticised by some legal experts, who warned the amendments may take Australia back to a time when mothers were granted primacy in court battles.
Domestic violence advocates welcomed the move, saying the changes were long overdue to stop perpetrators using the family law system and parenting arrangements to prolong conflict and coercive control over shared decision-making.
However, a major 2019 inquiry by the Australian Law Reform Commission did not recommend removal of the presumption of shared responsibilities but proposed the clause be reworded to allow “joint decision-making about major long-term issues”.
Senator Cash said Labor had ignored the “explicit recommendations of Australia’s leading law reform body”, and warned the changes “send a message to the courts that parliament no longer considers it beneficial for both parents to be involved in decisions about their children’s lives”.
She also criticised Labor’s removal of the word “meaningful” from the Act, arguing the change sent a clear message to the courts that it was no longer important to look at the benefits of a meaningful relationship between a child and their parents.
The Weekend Australian understands the policy has not been taken to shadow cabinet but it is looking to overturn the changes to bring the laws in line with the ALRC review recommendations.
The opposition is concerned the changes will lead to more delays and higher rates of litigation for families, drawing out the cost and pain for separating couples.
Family law expert Patrick Parkinson said he welcomed the opposition’s interest in producing a better-balanced and fairer set of provisions for parents who have not engaged in serious violence.
Professor Parkinson, a key adviser to the Howard government that amended the Act in 2006 following lobbying from fathers’ groups, warned Labor’s changes were too heavily focused on dealing with violent perpetrators rather than serving the population as a whole.
“I think the law that the government has passed is very imbalanced and doesn’t adequately support the role of both parents in children's lives when it is beneficial for them,” he said. “It is very focused on the issue of violence to the detriment of other issues the courts should consider.”
But Griffith University Law School senior lecturer Zoe Rathus said the shared parental responsibility provision had created a lot of confusion and had been poorly understood in the community. She said the provision was highly problematic and caused significant difficulties for victims of family violence.
However, Ms Rathus expressed some concern that rigid guardrails within the law around equal responsibility had been removed and there may be an information vacuum as the courts and community adjusts to the change.
She also said it was impossible to know whether there would be more confusion but hoped judges could use innovative ways to ensure children have meaningful relationships with both parents in cases where it is safe to do so.
“There were previously very constrained pathways … judges had to follow and now it’s all gone, and there is no discussion for when you might make an order for joint decision-making and there’s no mention of equal time.”
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Labor tips scales in favour of plaintiffs and their lawyers with sexual harassment bill
The Australian Labor Party sure knows how to wish its friends a happy new year. If there were any doubt about Mark Dreyfus’s place in the plaintiff lawyers’ Hall of Fame, his latest gift to them puts it to rest.
Labor’s Attorney-General has introduced a bill giving employees who claim their employers have sexually harassed or discriminated against them a free pass to trot off to court. Under Dreyfus’s proposed bill, claimants who lose in court won’t have to pay their bosses’ legal bills unless the claim is so ridiculous that a judge labels it vexatious. And judges are not known for spotting even the most obvious vexatious claims.
Opposition legal affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash rightly points out that this straps a rocket booster to the litigation industry. The ALP’s old friends at firms such as Maurice Blackburn and Slater & Gordon will be licking their lips with new year glee. No more worries about meeting budgets or winning cases – if your billings are down, just find a claimant who has even the slightest sniff of a claim and bingo, billings are up.
Employers who thought the cult of disgruntled employees demanding “go away” money had at least arrived at a plateau will realise it is about to hit the sunlit uplands of litigation nirvana.
It’s not uncommon – indeed, it’s almost standard operating procedure – for employers to face fake claims of workplace harassment from an underperforming employee. It’s bad enough for big business, but what about small businesses or not-for-profits such as religious schools? They have little choice but to pay even a bogus claim as soon as it arrives in the inbox for fear of mountainous legal bills.
There are at least two rich veins of ALP policy history being mined here. The first is that old standby of Labor folklore – cash for policy. The second is a slighter newer tradition of trashing the legal fundamentals underlying the rule of law.
Cash for policy is the core of the ALP business model and works at many levels. We saw it in full swing from the outset of the Albanese government when Assistant Treasurer and Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones tried to sneak through regulations that would have concealed the amounts of money industry super funds paid to the unions.
The biggest policy thankyou to the unions that fund the ALP came in the form of industrial relations reforms such as redefining casual employment to the edge of extinction, the “same job, same pay” laws that aimed to gut the use of labour hire by BHP and Qantas and vastly increased powers and privileges for union delegates.
The Albanese government said an early thankyou to plaintiff law firms when, soon after being elected, it relaxed the rules governing litigation funding. Happily for class action law firms, Jones, early in his tenure, released litigation funders from the need to hold financial services licences. Prominent donors to the ALP such as Maurice Blackburn would no doubt have been suitably grateful.
Now comes this further boon to plaintiffs and their lawyers. It will indeed be a happy new year for them.
In some respects, the second trend is more worrying. In Australia, the usual expectation is that “costs follow the event”. In other words, the loser pays the winner’s costs. This rule creates in-built sanctions against bringing unworthy actions, offering society at least some protection from bottom-feeding lawyers.
Abolishing this rule, even in limited ways, guarantees that more disgruntled employees will try their luck at litigation lotto. Worse, the proposal to protect complainants against costs orders is evidence of something more – an increased desire by the Labor government to place a finger on the scales of justice to tilt them against unpopular defendants.
This government regards all employers with suspicion. Whether you are a family running a small business or BHP, this government wants to multiply claims against you as an instrument of policy.
BHP may be able to afford it – indeed, BHP’s army of lawyers, HR people and compliance officers will rejoice at the chance to engage in more empire building to deal with these rotten measures. BHP’s boneheaded embrace of the Albanese government is already coming back to bite it, but it is protected from the consequences of its board’s folly by the undeserved but seemingly endless rise of the iron ore price.
Small businesses do not have the buffer of such dumb luck. They already have to take a deep breath before hiring new staff, knowing what paperwork burdens await them, and will now have another category of claims and claimants to worry about. How does this help productivity – except at law firms?
The constant drip of measures reversing the onus of proof, measures making life tough for unpopular classes of defendant and measures encouraging speculative claims undermines confidence in our legal system.
When NSW judge Robert Newlinds recently called for an end to the “lazy and perhaps politically expedient” referral of baseless rape claims to courts, he touched a nerve already exposed by similar claims.
In August this year I wrote about the demonstrably false claims of domestic violence brought against boxer Harry Garside. Except that Garside had the good fortune, or foresight, to record a critical interaction with his accuser, this decent and somewhat quirky young man would have lost a promising career to a claim totally lacking in merit. Making it easier to launch legal actions is no guarantee of justice – indeed, the opposite may be true.
Dreyfus may argue, though he tabled no empirical evidence in support of this view, that measures to turbocharge claims of harassment and discrimination may help a claimant who would not otherwise get legal assistance.
Mind you, even Kate Jenkins, on whose Respect@Work report the Dreyfus proposal was based, did not go as far as the Dreyfus proposal. Jenkins recommended a hard cost-neutrality approach in line with the Fair Work Act where parties bear their own costs unless the claim was vexatious or unreasonable.
Given the voracious appetite of lawyers and litigation funders to find and run new claims on a no-win, no-fee basis, or similar, this now familiar Dreyfus overreach is even more dubious. There is no justice in turbocharging an inevitable torrent of “pay me to go away” claims and adding another Labor brake on productivity.
Centuries of legal experience have told us the right balance is to allow costs to follow the result. The Albanese government’s desire to ring in the new year by giving presents to its friends is no reason to ignore the wisdom of the ages.
Dreyfus’s ill-conceived changes are also a thankyou to big Australian companies and their boards for being stupid, for keeping their head down and thinking Labor wouldn’t come for them.
What fools these highly paid executives and board directors were – and are. Almost all of them signed on to Albanese’s signature policy of a constitutionally entrenched voice even before there was any wording around it. For months and months they flaunted their faux virtue over a policy that would not help them or their shareholders one iota – a policy that was overwhelmingly rejected at the referendum because ordinary Australians understood what was at stake. This stand of corporate Australia was the biggest single act of collective corporate negligence in many, many years.
It was made much worse by the fact that concurrently these same big companies ignored the larger and more real risk of Labor’s workplace policies being legislated with the help of the corporate-hating Greens – polices that directly hurt companies, big and small. Their negligence is economy destroying. And their public whinging now about Labor policies should be greeted by Peter Dutton with a cold shoulder.
The Opposition Leader should fashion himself as the saviour of small business and leave those people on big corporate boards to live with the consequences of misusing their power.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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