RECENT calls by BMW Australia boss Marc Werner for action on subsidies and extra infrastructure for low-emission vehicles, as well as taking the axe to the luxury car tax (LCT), are likely to receive a cool reception in Canberra.

The Coalition government has a wafer thin majority in the lower house and an unruly, almost unworkable Senate. Current government members are broadly not great believers in man-made climate change. They have a large fiscal deficit and a great political imperative to return the budget to surplus as soon as possible.

A request to cut a tax while introducing a subsidy and spending extra money on infrastructure is a big ask. Cutting a tax while spending more is not a deficit-reducing equation, even if the Senate could be persuaded to agree to it.

A Liberal government is likely to favour letting the market take care of it. They may well take the view that if enough people out there are so concerned about the environment that they want low-emission vehicles, then they will stump up their own cash to buy them.

Similarly, if enough people own low-emission vehicles to bump up demand for places to plug them in, then they will expect the market will take care of that too.

BMW 740 Le

How many horse stables and blacksmith’s shops became petrol stations back in the day? Isn’t it likely that the big energy companies will make use of their existing service station network to plug in electric cars as soon as fewer people want to buy their petrol?

The other side of politics might not be a much greener pasture for this set of proposals either.

The Labor opposition certainly claims to have better environmental credentials than the government and may well make some general noise on infrastructure spending and subsidies while their hands are off the levers of power.

But in government they would have to find the money and navigate the Senate too. Public transport will be a higher priority than hybrids for those seeking the best bang for their policy buck in terms of both moving the masses and helping the environment for the foreseeable future.

On top of that, the timing could not be worse as Australian homes are plunged into darkness, and businesses have stock destroyed, by the inability of the power industry to supply the electricity we need today without having proposals that will place even greater demands on the grid.

Can you imagine: we are short of power stations and you want us to do what with increasing the places to charge up electric cars and use even more power?

BMW 740 e

Then there are the hardened cynics who inhabit the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

While GoAutoNews Premium is certain that BMW’s motives in calling for these changes are purely for the love of Mother Earth, it is equally certain that not everyone else in the media will agree.

BMW has built the cars – a comprehensive range of plug-ins all the way up to the new $229,000 740e iPerformance luxury sedan – and discovered in markets other than Australia that they sell well if governments tip in cash to help buyers across the threshold of price pain.

So it won’t take the Press Gallery journos long to scan BMW’s model line-up and decide that here is a manufacturer with car yards full of expensive plug-in cars that it wants government help to shift.

“Car company on the make” is a likely tabloid headline as the stories go on to point out the clear contradiction and conflict of interest in a luxury car-maker calling for tax cuts and a public subsidy of its products, and the network to charge them, so that it can sell more cars.

Daniel Cotterill is a former federal ministerial chief of staff.

Comment by Daniel Cotterill