John MacDonald: Road user charges are fairer for everyone

If you drive a petrol vehicle, how’s that $20-a-week tax cut looking now that the Government wants to sting you with road user charges?

I’m being a bit facetious. Because I actually think road user charges are much fairer than fuel taxes. Because, when you use a road, it makes no difference whether you drive an old dunger or something more modern - you’re still using it.

Max Salmon: Fuel tax is a dying revenue source

New Zealand is a long, narrow country with a very low population density. Air transport is expensive and passenger rail almost non-existent. As a result, our cities, towns, and rural communities rely heavily on our local and national road network.

To pay for this network, New Zealand relies materially on a tax on the petrol we put in our cars, known as the Fuel Excise Duty (FED). Traditionally, this has been a low-cost funding tool. Nearly every vehicle in New Zealand uses petrol. The tax is simple to collect, the revenue generated scaled with road use, and it increased with the consumer’s road use.

Kerre Woodham: Enforcement looks to be the main concern with National's road user charges

We've also got an election coming up in five weeks, haven't we? So it was another weekend and another presentation of party policies coming thick and fast, wasn't it?

Health targets from National, the scrapping of building consents from ACT, our ocean policy from the Greens, disagreements between National and ACT and Labour when it comes to the impending shake-up of our scientific research sector, and the proposal to introduce road user charges on all cars from National.

John MacDonald: Road user charges for everyone not the answer

For an outfit that doesn’t like red tape, the National Party seems to be having some sort of brain explosion.

Because it doesn't just want EV owners to pay road user charges - which I don’t think anyone would disagree with - it also wants to go the whole hog and get rid of fuel taxes completely and make everyone pay road user charges.

Eric Crampton: The Government transport policy that gave officials a day to cost it on a Sunday

Just before 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, about a dozen New Zealand Transport Agency and Ministry of Transport officials received a weekend-ruining email. Subject: “Cabinet paper: Urgent.”

It provides a depressing insight into how policy gets made.

The agency that would have to administer a fuel tax and Road User Charge (RUC) holiday had less than a day’s notice that the change was coming.

Important detail had to be filled in after the policy was announced, which also may have prevented improvements that ran counter to what had already been announced.