Cory Bernardi outlines legislation that has just passed banning *old-style* 2-stroke motors from 2019 — meaning lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chainsaws, weed whackers, and outboard boat motors. In Australia mowers and fishing tinnies are heritage material. It’s a new carbon tax by stealth, pretending to be about health.
h/t to Tim Blair who adds a movie of Australians dancing with lawn mowers for the Sydney Olympic opening ceremony (just to give you foreigners some appreciation of how attached Australians are to them).
Stock up now. You may not be able to buy them (legally) after 2019. I predict a high black market value decent prices for “Vintage models on ebay”.
Bernardi argues that theoretically this ruling could be extended to farm machinery, quad bikes, and off road dirt bikes.
Why did One Nation vote for this? Oops… UPDATE: And here’s the answer from Malcolm Roberts, who argues it is not about CO2 but about real pollution.
At Tim Blairs: Commenter Bruce there suggest this will apply to some model aircraft engines too.
Commenter P Temperatures will plummet and we’ll be thrown back into an ice age
The Australian standards will be based on the USA EPA rules but, to make it easier for importers, outboards with certification in the USA, EU, Canadian and California (CARB) will all pass.
AMEC says in its news release on this matter that exemptions for small outboard engines were never an idea that would carry water. “With a carbie 8hp two stroke pushing out 59 per cent more emissions per hour than a 150hp four-stroke outboard, exemptions were never viable,” Fooks from Blue Sky Alliance says.
11:30pm HEADLINE edited to add *old style* to show that two-strokes are not banned entirely, just the current models. So this is about increasing the cost of this equipment, Bernardi argues it’s been done for CO2 reasons. Roberts position is that it’s for health reasons.