Scott Morrison has decided electric cars won’t threaten Aussie weekends

As well as Michelle Grattan’s usual interviews with experts and politicians about the news of the day, Politics with Michelle Grattan now includes “Word from The Hill”, where all things political will be discussed with members of The Conversation’s politics team.

Scott Morrison is gearing up for the election in the first half of 2022. As the country emerges from COVID constraints, the PM is trying to make up for lost time on the ground, travelling in NSW and Victoria this week. He’s selling some of the nitty gritty of his emissions reduction policy, including a plan to encourage the take up of electric cars.

But in Melbourne he was confronted by his own embarrassing quotes from 2019, when he laid into Labor’s policy on these vehicles, claiming they would “end the weekend” and that people who lived in apartments would have to dangle an extension cord out of their windows to charge their cars.

Michelle and Amanda also canvass the latest developments in the allegations, involving federal MPs, of branch stacking activities in the Victorian Liberal and Labor parties, and the slow grind in the quest for a federal integrity commission.