'Bill's telling Whoppers!' Shorten is mocked for making bizarre comparison between slashing the number of petrol cars and telling a friend not to eat 10 Big Macs
- Bill Shorten finally addressed costs of Labor's 50 per cent electric car policy
- Plan aims to have half of all new cars sold in Australia be electric by 2030
- Opposition leader compared costs to those of 'chubby' people getting in shape
- He said there was a costs to cutting down on fast food and exercising
- Admitted policy was more of a goal than something that would definitely happen
- Voters joked he was 'telling whoppers' and compared it to John Hewson's cake
Bill Shorten has finally tried to explain cost of his electric car policy... by comparing it to exercising and cutting down on Big Macs.
The Opposition Leader spent weeks dodging questions about how his plan to make half of all Australian new car sales electric by 2030.
Electric cars only have a market share of about 0.2 per cent, selling about 2,500 a year which would need to be dramatically upped to 600,000 in 11 years.
Voters did not warm to Mr Shorten's Big Mac analogy, some even quipping that he should have used a Hungry Jacks one instead since he was 'telling whoppers'.
Bill Shorten has finally tried to explain cost of his electric car policy... by comparing it to exercising and cutting down on Big Macs
Labor's policy claims it will not subsidise any vehicles, instead spending $100 million to build infrastructure around the country to encourage their use.
'What we're doing is we're saying we'll put in battery-charging stations so that if you want to buy an electric car you've got somewhere to charge it,' Mr Shorten told Perth's Nova 937 radio on Tuesday.
Mr Shorten then justified the expense, and any others that may follow, with a bizarre analogy to 'chubby' people slimming down by cutting fast food and hitting the gym.
'You know what, mate, you are a great athlete,' he said to Nova's morning host.
'But if you had a friend who was perhaps on the large side, the chubby side, and they had 10 Big Macs a day… there's a cost to not eating the Big Macs.
'But in the long term it's an investment isn't it? The idea that you can get positive change from putting nil effort in.
'I'm going to use this example of the exercise. Sure there's a cost to exercising but there's a benefit. Now which do you measure? The cost or the benefit or do you accept that it's all part of a total package.'
The opposition leader spent weeks dodging questions about how his plan to make half of all Australian new car sales electric by 2030
Mr Shorten then justified the expense, and any others that may follow, with a bizarre analogy to 'chubby' people slimming down by cutting fast food and hitting the gym
Mr Shorten also clarified that the 50 per cent target was more of a goal than an actual mandate and may not even happen.
'What we've said is that by 2030 we would like to see half of the new cars sold be electric. That doesn't mean that will happen,' he said.
Mr Shorten's odd analogy was widely mocked by voters.
'Bill Shorten - selling Big Macs and telling Whoppers,' one man wrote on Twitter.
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'He won't own up how much his policies will cost... Forget his crap about big mac, Shorten is more a whopper guy as he tells big whoppers,' another wrote.
A third wrote: 'Who knows anyone who eats 10 Big Macs a day? Bill Shorten is off the radar. Equating eating a Big Mac to 'real action on climate change' (whatever that is) is not only disingenuous but dishonest.'
Other voters compared his analogy to former Liberal leader John Hewson's infamous analogy of the GST to a birthday cake during the 1993 election campaign.
Mr Shorten washed down his radio claims with a visit to engineering firm Civmec at its site south of Perth where he posed with high-vs and helmet-wearing workers
'Did he stop and talk to all of you like we've done?' he asked them, in reference to Prime Minister Scott Morrison's visit the previous day
Mr Hewson was asked whether a birthday cake would cost more or less to buy from a shop under his GST plan and couldn't give a straight answer.
His misstep in the A Current Affair interview is widely viewed as a turning point in the campaign that he eventually lost to Paul Keating, despite being heavily favoured.
Mr Shorten washed down his radio claims with a visit to engineering firm Civmec where he posed with high-vs and helmet-wearing workers.
'Did he stop and talk to all of you like we've done?' he asked them, in reference to Prime Minister Scott Morrison's visit the previous day.
