Federal MP Barnaby Joyce is so concerned about China controlling its electric vehicles in Australia he could barely let his Labor opponent explain what the government is doing about the apparent “threat”. Senior Labor cabinet member Tanya Plibersek and Mr Joyce appeared on Sunrise on Monday morning. Their discussion got typically combative; “It would be really nice to finish a sentence,” Ms Plibersek said.
“Now it’s my turn, Tanya,” Mr Joyce said shortly after. The gruff debate was centred on Mr Joyce’s concerns about Chinese interference through that country’s electric vehicles, which make up about 80 per cent of EVs on Australian roads. Mr Joyce already started pushing the China point over the weekend, liking the threat to Israel’s use of exploding pager devices.
The US government has proposed a ban on importation and sale of vehicles with Chinese and Russian-manufactured software and hardware because of the threat of tracking, data harvesting and literal foreign interference in the automobile. But both Labor and the Coalition have ruled out a ban here. Sunrise host Natalie Barr asked Mr Joyce if he was “fearful that the Chinese could somehow push buttons and blow up solar panels and electric vehicles.
“We’ve seen it, we have overloaded systems on roofs. Where do I see this? I get this from people. We’ve seen people who had their hot water systems controlled.
If you control the overloader on a heating you have a real problem,” Mr Joyce said. �.