I like EVs: Bridges

National Party leader Simon Bridges says he’s broadly supportive of electric vehicles and has had two of them.

Responding to questions from TVNZ political editor Tova O’Brien around National climate change spokesman Todd Muller contradicting Bridges and the Opposition in saying he was supportive of the government’s electric car policy, Bridges says he and Muller are broadly supportive of EVs.

“We believe in climate change. We believe we’ve got to work our way through those issues and do a lot,” Bridges responds.

He says he’s not attacking the Government’s ‘clean car’ policy proposal but rather the Labour-led Government’s suggestion of a tax on higher emission vehicles, included under a ‘feebate’ proposal providing discounts for low and zero emission vehicles and penalising polluters.

”I actually don’t think that sort of disincentive works, necessarily,” Bridges says. “I mean, if you take the car tax, you’ve got a situation where mums and dads with kids, they can’t just get in a Suzuki Swift or move to an electric vehicle. It’s not practical for their life. Neither can tradies or farmers.”

“So it simply is – as I’ve said before and I’ll say again – a sneaky tax grab.”

Asked if he supports the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, to which more than 15,000 Kiwis and organisations responded before submissions closed on July 16, Bridges says National “wants to” back about 90% of it in terms of its design and structure.

“There’s some very serious parts we don’t like, though, and that’s around methane tax.”

Bridges says his “constitutional duty” is to hold prime minister Jacinda Ardern and her government to account. “Not in a personal way, not with those Green-style attack ads or other such thing”, he says, referring to the since pulled Green Party advertisement depicting him as a used car salesman. “But on her policies and so on.”