Tuesday, 2 June 2026

 Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (14:59): Pursuant to standing order 23.22, I table a report on the inquiry into electricity supply for electric vehicles, including an appendix, extracts of proceedings and minority report, from the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, and I present the transcripts of evidence. I move:

That the transcripts of evidence be tabled and the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

Georgie PURCELL: I move:

That the Council take note of the report.

This was a referral that was given to us some time ago now and probably became even more relevant at the beginning of the inquiry process as we faced a fuel crisis across our state. It was a real realisation that perhaps we need to do something about electric vehicle supply and, importantly, charging infrastructure across our state. I very much want to thank Ms Copsey for sending this referral to us as a committee.

The electric car market reached new highs globally in 2025, growing by 20 per cent from 2024 to exceed 20 million sales. The sale shares of electric cars in the overall car market increased to 25 per cent. This marked the fifth consecutive year in which annual electric car sales increased by about 3.5 million. While Australia has lagged behind other countries in this transition, it is clear that the uptake of electric vehicles is rapidly gathering pace. Electric vehicles have seen a massive surge in Australia, making up just over 13 per cent of all new car sales to date this year. Momentum is building rapidly, with EV market share peaking at 16.4 per cent in April, meaning roughly one in every six new cars sold across the country is fully electric.

One of the obstacles to Australian uptake has been a lack of public charging infrastructure. While this is less of an issue for the majority of people who can charge at home, it has a substantial impact on the willingness of people who have no way of charging at home to transition to an electric car. This may be because they live in an apartment building, which we heard about heavily throughout the inquiry process, or a house with no off-street parking or they rent and are unable to install a home charger. These equity issues, along with some of the other limitations of the public charging infrastructure in Victoria, have been a big focus of the inquiry, but the committee also saw great opportunities to enhance the electricity grid through bidirectional charging, as electric vehicles are energy storage systems on wheels. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, electric vehicles have the potential to not only greatly reduce the cost of personal and commercial transport but also the cost of energy in the home and in businesses. Overall this was a really interesting and, as I said, very timely inquiry. The report makes a number of great recommendations, which will, hopefully, be adopted and increase access to charging infrastructure and ultimately electric vehicles, because that is one of the big barriers holding people back from making purchases in the first place.

I would really like to thank all members of the committee and all of the witnesses who made submissions and gave evidence throughout the inquiry. Their insights and expertise were really helpful and helped the committee understand the somewhat complex issues that were being examined. I would also like to thank all the committee members, who approached the inquiry in a collegiate and professional manner. It is a topic area that we all agreed needs addressing. There is a minority report, so we do have some differing views on the way that should be done, but overall everyone worked really collaboratively throughout the inquiry process.

As always and probably most importantly, I would really like to thank the committee secretariat for their professional and diligent work. That includes committee manager Michael Baker. This is his second-last inquiry before he retires. I know electric vehicles are very much a passion area of his, and he was absolutely stoked to do this inquiry on the way out. Thank you, Mike, for managing the inquiry process. I would also like to thank both Alyssa Topy, our inquiry officer, and Jamie Huffer, research assistant, for their excellent work during the inquiry and their assistance in drafting a complex and detailed report. I know all members who work on committees know this, but the committee staff work incredibly hard, often across a range of different inquiries. As chair of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, I just want to say a really big thankyou again for your great work in supporting us in doing our jobs and making us look good a lot of the time when we table these reports in the Parliament. This is a really great report. It was great to be part of it, and I look forward to seeing the government’s response, hopefully before the end of the term.

 Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (15:04): I am pleased to be able to speak to this report. This committee certainly inquired into lots of different issues, and this one saw the Economy and Infrastructure Committee look at electric vehicles and the integration with Victoria’s electricity supply. We received lots of submissions, and we heard from a range of witnesses, including local councils, battery experts, energy suppliers and the EV association, amongst others. We appreciate the input of different MPs; we, the Liberals and Nationals, submitted a minority report. We do support practical measures to ensure that the integration of EVs within the electricity network is reliable, affordable and fair without placing additional cost pressures on Victorian households, increasing safety risks or compromising the reliability of the state’s electricity system.

Certainly, the rise in EV sales that we are seeing is going to increase demand for electricity, and this is of concern when we have issues around energy reliability in Victoria, and that was evidenced by the Victorian Auditor-General’s report at the end of last year about managing the transition to renewable energy. Continued government subsidies place additional costs on taxpayers, and the report did recommend quite a number of different incentives, which is a concern – as we have seen from the recent state budget, we have massive state debt, and the interest costs per day are staggering.

Power reliability is a significant issue, particularly in regional areas. We heard about areas like Euroa that have struggled to upgrade their network system there, and they have countless outages, which is a big problem. There are also safety risks associated with the batteries; we heard it is like a helmet that gets damaged: you cannot predict how reliable it is. But moving forward, we need to ensure that there is reliability in our energy system and consumer choice and long-term benefits for all Victorians.

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (15:06): I rise to give a brief contribution. As Georgie Purcell has said, the intervening circumstances of the fuel crisis have only made the recommendations coming out of this report more salient. There are a number of recommendations around supporting uptake of EVs, including for the Victorian government to strengthen targeted demand-side incentives, like purchase subsidies and registration discounts, and advocating to the Commonwealth government. That, importantly, includes the Victorian government funding targeted programs around emerging areas, like bidirectional charging technologies, to build the market in relation to these emerging technical areas.

I also note really pleasing recommendations around things that are entirely within government control, such as increasing procurement and continuing to play that important role in bringing more EVs, particularly second-hand ones, into the market for Victorians and supporting local government to do the same. Importantly as well, there is a recommendation around addressing misinformation and misconceptions around electric vehicles, which we heard are a little bit prolific, particularly in the online environment, so that is an important element for the government to step into as well.

The other recommendation I wanted to highlight was the important one that we heard around EV readiness and the National Construction Code. There has been some backsliding in that space, and my concern is that it will be much more expensive and burdensome on households to retrofit technology for EVs that are growing in number so quickly rather than putting that in place and making sure that new builds are EV ready.

Thanks again to the secretariat for all the immense work that went into creating this. It was a very interesting inquiry, and I commend the report to the chamber.

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:08): I will make a very short contribution. I would like to thank the chair and all the other committee members. I thought it was a very interesting inquiry. In some ways, though, not to repeat what other members have said, really, to an extent, what the inquiry did was simply reveal the issues as opposed to address the issues or solve the issues. We saw a range of issues around the economics of electronic vehicles and infrastructure – that almost every layer of the whole industry needed subsidies to be viable. We had issues with equity and fairness and accessibility in rural areas. There were multiple opportunities but also issues with batteries and some things around that. I think in future that the report will be valuable largely from the point of view that it identifies the problems, but the actual harder work of solving the problems remains unaddressed.

Motion agreed to.