Both Labour and National want to freeze increases to the petrol tax.
Labour would stop 22c a litre over three years. The Nats probably won't, coalition willing, go ahead with the 12c hike pencilled in for January.
The problem is this money goes into a big fund - along with RUCS from trucks - to pay for building and fixing our roads.
Remember at the last election people were angry as hell about potholes.
They're nasty things. Wheely annoying. Rim-wreckers. Rim-shredders.
Panel beaters had a field day... performing more rim jobs than you could shake a stick at.
We had 62k potholes back then. Highest number in a decade.
The money to fill them in comes from the petrol tax.
It's ring-fenced into a pothole fund.
Less money in that mean means crapper roads.
To make matters worse, Labour wants to raid this fund to pay for cheaper bus fares for city folk.
It's one of their election promises.
So, the fund is being starved on new money at the same it's being robbed - a Peter to pay Paul-type situation.
The coalition's making it's call on Monday about the funding.
The easy route is to stop the tax. The hard route is to hike it.
Which means no matter who's in charge, we'll probably have cheaper gas next year but wrecked rims, and that includes, ironically, the buses.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
The petrol levy is Not a Tax . It is a system designed to manage our roading maintenance .
The only problem is EV owners and their ilk owe each fully Internal combustion operator a nod of thanks , beer , or KFC . your choice .
As the owner of an EV I owe nothing to the ICE owners of this country because I pay RUCs as well. And given the averaging mechanism needed to build RUC into the price of petrol, I probably pay more RUC to travel the same distance as an economical small capacity ICE vehicle.
Somewhat tangental, but my main road driving comprises in the main just a few Auck to near Wgtn trips each year. Hence trends are noticeable. Five or ten years ago a surprising number of large trucks seemed governed to a speed very close to a true 90 kph. But in a recent overnight trip through the NI I noted the majority of the very many trucks now cruise at closer to a true 100 kph.(One exceprtion at near 90 kph seemed from its yellow headlights to be an older model) Road wear presumably follows at least a linear law, which possibly explains the great increase in potholes in recent years. Did Police/NZTA adopt a more lax policy? Many car drivers do not object as they find near 90 kph obstrucrive.Incidentally the complete disregard of roadwork speed restrictions late at night by trucks was astonishing. As much more time is saved by ignoring low speed limits, I guess it pays.
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