Michelle Grattan, University of CanberraAnthony Albanese will promise a Labor government would deliver a discount to cut the cost of electric cars and install community batteries, in modest initiatives costing $400 million over several years.
The announcement, to be made Wednesday, comes as Labor debates its platform at a “virtual” national conference involving some 400 participants.
At present only 0.7% of cars sold in Australia are electric – considerably under the global average of 4.2%. There are only about 20,000 electric cars registered in Australia.
Labor’s policy would cut taxes on non-luxury vehicles – the luxury threshold is $77,565 in 2020-21 – exempting them from tariffs and fringe benefits tax.
The Electric Vehicle Council has estimated a $50,000 model would be more than $2000 cheaper if the import tariff was removed. These tariffs are not on all the imported vehicles – there are exclusions where Australia has free trade agreements.
If a $50,000 vehicle was provided through employment, exempting it from the fringe benefits tax would save the employer (or employee, depending on how the FBT was arranged) up to $9000 annually, Labor says.
The opposition at the last election had a policy to promote electric cars, with a target of 50% per cent of new car sales being electric vehicles by 2030.
This came under heavy attack from the government, which cast it as a “war on the weekend”.
The government recently released a discussion paper on electric cars, and flagged it would trial models for the COMCAR fleet which transports politicians.
In a statement on the initiatives, Albanese and energy spokesman Chris Bowen said electric vehicles remain too expensive for most people, although a majority of Australians say they would consider buying one. There are no electric cars available in Australia for less than $40,000.
“By reducing upfront costs, Labor’s electric car discount will encourage uptake, cutting fuel and transport costs for households and reducing emissions at the same time,” Albanese and Bowen said.
The discount would begin on July 1 2022 and cost $200 million over three years.
The community batteries would help households who have solar panels but do not have their own battery storage, which is expensive.
Australia has one in five households with solar, but only one in 60 households has battery storage, which gives the capacity to draw overnight on the solar energy produced during the day.
Labor would spend $200 million over four years to install 400 community batteries across the country. This would assist up to 100,000 households.
Albanese and Bowen said the measure would cut power bills, reduce demands on the grid at peak times and lower emissions.
“Households that can’t install solar (like apartments and renters) can participate by drawing from excess energy stored in community batteries.”
A community battery is about the size of 4WD vehicle and provides about 500kWH of storage that can support up to 250 local households.
Before we knew it, autumn rolled in bringing more rain. Tragically, it led to widespread flooding across New South Wales, but elsewhere it helped to create more puddles. In our urban environments puddles are inconvenient: they can damage property and block our paths. But from a biological perspective, puddles are very important components of microhabitats and biodiversity.
We know for many animals — including birds and pets — puddles are a ready source of drinking water and provide a much-needed bath after a hot and dusty day. They’re also well known for providing water-reliant species such as mosquitoes with opportunities for breeding, and many of us may remember watching tadpoles developing in puddles as children.
But puddles make more nuanced and subtle contributions to the natural world than you may have realised. So with more rain soon to arrive, let’s explore why they’re so valuable.
Puddles are getting harder to find in urban environments. Shutterstock
Take a closer look
Puddles are a diverse lot. They can be small or large, shallow or deep, long lasting or gone in a matter of hours. If you look closely at a puddle you will often find it is not even, especially on a slope.
Puddles consist of small, naturally formed ridges (berms) and depressions (swales). The berms form from silt and organic matter like leaf litter, which act as mini dams holding back the water in the swales behind them.
Berms and swales can be hard to see, but if you look closely they’re everywhere and contribute to the retention of water, affecting the depth, spread and the very existence of the puddle.
All of this means they meet the needs of different species.
The tiny ridges and depressions in puddles can make a big difference to wildlife. Shutterstock
On rainy days you may have seen birds such as magpies feeding on worms that wriggle to the surface. Worm burrows can be two to three metres deep and many species might come to the surface to feed on leaf litter.
Worms emerge during and after heavy rain when water floods their burrows and soil becomes saturated. The worms won’t drown but they do need oxygen, which is low in very wet soils.
Often in drier weather, getting a worm is not as easy as you might think — not even for the legendary early bird. So when heavy rain drives worms to the surface, it’s party time for birds that feed on them, and they make the most of the opportunity.
A spotted pardalote inspecting puddle. Shutterstock
Swales in puddles often persist for days, which allows water-dependent insects to breed. Mosquito larvae, for instance, live in water for between four and 14 days, depending on temperature (so if you’re worried about mozzies, then remember puddles have to persist for days before the pesky pests emerge).
Tadpoles take between four and 12 weeks to develop into frogs, and requires a deeper, long-lasting puddle. But these puddles are becoming rarer in urban areas, and so it’s not often you see tadpoles or frogs in our suburbs.
Why seeds love them
Puddles also provide small, but important, reservoirs where seeds of many plant species germinate. In some cases, the seeds have chemical inhibitors in them, which prevent the seeds from germinating until after a period of heavy rainfall.
Then, the inhibitors are leeched from or diluted within the seeds, allowing them to germinate. Many desert species have this adaptation, including Australian eremophilas (emu bush).
In other cases, plants that grow all year round (annoyingly, weeds among them) need the dose of water puddles provide to kick start their very rapid growth and reproduction.
Easily germinated plants (such as tomatoes and cabbages) and ornamental flowering plants (such as hollyhocks and delphiniums) often require just a little extra water to trigger the whole germination process.
Important growing opportunities for iconic trees
Puddles also provide more subtle opportunities for wildlife. Take Australia’s iconic river red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) as an example. River red gums are water-loving trees that can withstand up to nine months of inundation without getting stressed.
Puddles can wash away plant-inhibiting chemicals from the soil. Shutterstock
What’s not so well known, however, is river red gums produce chemicals that rain washes from their leaves, accumulating beneath the tree. These chemicals can inhibit the growth of plants, such as weeds, under the canopies.
This effect — where chemicals produced by one plant have an effect on other plants — is called “allelopathy”. Many wattle species produce allelopathic chemicals and so do some important food plants, such as walnuts, rice and the common pea.
River red gum allelopathic chemicals can prevent the trees’ own seedlings from growing near them. So river red gums require floods to wash the chemicals from the soil away. This mechanism allows river red gums to germinate and regenerate when the soil is wet, and in places away from the competition of mature trees.
Puddles can do the same thing, on a small scale, ensuring trees have plenty of opportunities to persist in the wild. This pattern of regeneration is important to provide a mosaic of species and trees of different ages, making up a diverse range of habitats for other wildlife.
Puddles are no piddling problem
Puddles are becoming harder to find in the suburbs. Shutterstock
As property developers iron the creases from our created landscapes with much less open space and more paved surfaces, puddles are becoming harder to find close to home.
Taking away puddles removes a whole range of microhabitats, jeopardising the chances of a diverse range of species to breed and persist, especially in urban areas. These days, any loss of biodiversity is worrying.
So when you’re next out and about after or during heavy rain, keep an eye out for puddles.
Remember the life that depends on them and, if you can, try not to disturb them. Perhaps capture the joy of jumping over — rather than in — them. They are not just a nuisance, but a key to a nuanced and biodiverse local community.
Humans aren’t the only ones in trouble. Many of the animals that live with and around us are also heading for higher ground as the floodwaters rise.
Often small creatures — especially invertebrates like spiders, cockroaches and millipedes — will seek refuge in the relatively dry and safe environments of people’s houses. While this can be a problem for the human inhabitants of the house, it’s important to make sure we don’t add to the ecological impact of the flood with an overzealous response to these uninvited guests.
Warragamba Dam in southwestern Sydney has been spilling a Sydney Harbour’s worth of water each day during the rains. Eliza Middleton, Author provided
What floods do to ecosystems
Floods can have a huge impact on ecosystems, triggering landslides, increasing erosion, and introducing pollutants and soil into waterways. One immediate effect is to force burrowing animals out of their homes, as they retreat to safer and drier locations. Insects and other invertebrates living in grass or leaf litter around our homes are also displaced.
Burrowing invertebrates come to the surface during floods, providing food for opportunistic birds. Dieter Hochuli, Author provided
Snakes have reportedly been “invading” homes in the wake of the current floods. Spiders too have fled the rising waters. Heavy rain can flood the burrows of the Australian funnelweb, one of the world’s most venomous spiders.
Some invertebrates will boom; others may plummet
Rain increases greenery, which can support breeding booms of animals such as mosquitoes, locusts, and snails.
Even species that don’t thrive after floods are likely to become more visible as they flock to our houses for refuge. But an apparent short-term increase in numbers may conceal a longer story of decline.
After periods of flooding, the abundance of invertebrates can fall by more than 90% and the number of different species in an area significantly drops. This has important implications for the recovery of an ecosystem, as many of the ground dwelling invertebrates displaced by floods are needed for soil cycling and decomposition.
So before you reach for the bug spray, consider the important role these animals play in our ecosystem.
What to do with the extra house guests?
If your house has been flooded, uninvited creatures taking shelter in your house are probably one of the smaller issues you are facing.
Once the rain subsides, cleaning in and around your property will help reduce unwanted visitors. Inside your house, you may see an increase in cockroaches, which flourish in humid environments. Ventilating the house to dry out any wet surfaces can help get rid of cockroach infestations, and filling crevices can also deter unwanted visitors.
In the garden, you may see an increase in flies in the coming weeks and months as they lay eggs in rotting plants. Consider removing any fruit and vegetables in the garden that may rot.
Mosquitoes are also one to watch as they lay eggs in standing water. Some species pose a risk of diseases such as Ross River virus. To prevent unwanted mozzies, make sure to empty things that have filled with rainwater, such as buckets and birdbaths.
If you do encounter one of our more dangerous animals in your home, such as venomous snakes and spiders, do not handle them yourself. If you find an injured or distressed snake, or are concerned about snakes in your house, call your local wildlife group who will be able to relocate them for you.
Just like the floods, which will subside as the water moves on, the uninvited gathering of animals is a temporary event. Most visitors will quickly disperse back to more appropriate habitat when the weather dries, and their usual homes are available again.
You may see an increase in slugs in your local area after rainy conditions. Eliza Middleton @smiley_lize
Don’t sweat the small stuff
While many of the impacts of floods are our own making, through poor planning and development in flood-prone areas, effective design of cities and backyards can mitigate the risks of floods. Vegetation acts as a “sponge” for stormwater, and appropriate drainage allows water to flow through more effectively. Increasing backyard vegetation also provides extra habitat for important invertebrate species, including pollinators and decomposers.
With severe weather events on the rise, it is important to understand how ecosystems respond to, and recover from natural disasters. If invertebrates are unable to perform vital ecosystem functions, such as soil cycling, decomposition, and pollination, ecosystems may struggle to return to their pre-flood state. If the ecosystems don’t recover, we may see prolonged booms of nuisance pests such as mosquitoes.
A few temporary visitors are are a minor inconvenience in comparison to the impacts floods have on the environment, infrastructure and the health and well-being of people impacted. So while it may seem like a bit of a creepy inconvenience, maybe we should let our house guests stay until the flood waters go down.
Kevin's Walk on the Wild Side 