“If the Queensland Government was really interested in helping the environment it would be advocating higher petrol taxes, not higher car registrations.”

If the Qld Govt was really interested in helping the environment, the most important thing it would be trying to do is working towards the stabilisation of population and hence the demand for all sorts of goods and resources and the production of CO2 and other wastes.

It would be implementing disincentives for people moving into Qld, especially into resource-and infrastructure-stressed areas, and it would be lobbying the feds for a massive reduction in immigration.

“Governments’ distorting the purchasing decisions of individuals is rarely a good idea. It is not their job to wag their finger at the choices we make.”

I disagree. It certainly is the role of government to “distort” purchasing decisions that work in the favour of our health and societal wellbeing.

V8s should incur large extra costs, unless an owner can show just cause for having one where a much more economic vehicle would suffice.

It would be nonsensical to only implement higher fuel taxes and not attempt to get people to purchase smaller more frugal vehicles as well. Both need to happen.

Ok, so there is a good trend towards the purchase of smaller cars, due to rising fuel prices. So why shouldn’t the government help it along a bit?

I don’t think Gaurav Sodhi should be concerned about this. What he should be concerned about is the continuously rapidly increasing number of car-buyers and fossil fuel consumers, which is still being encouraged and facilitated by the crazy Qld government, while they are at the same time making some (rather piddling) efforts to get us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions!

I am all for getting V8's and other gas guzzler's off the road as they are wasteful, often noisy and generally not needed to get you from A to B. However Gaurav Sodhi does have a point in regards to engine size. Rather than pinging people on engine configuration the sting should be on the car's consumption. An offical consumption figure (already produced for all car's) could be linked to the registration fee.

As for a petrol tax, its already got enough. Introducing more would be akin to political suicide.

Since most population growth in Queensland is from interstate migration, the CO2 production is just being offset from southern states to Queensland. Might save some of your water though ;)

Sounds like Ludwig doesn't like all those "Mexicans" moving into his beloved state. A personal bugbear?

I for one would personally disagree strongly with adding more to the cost of fuel in order to curb driving habits unless there was some consideration to city verses country pricing.
People in rural areas have practically nil alternatives to personal transport for daily commuting to jobs in nearby cities. Being a scattered population often means there is nobody in their immediate area with whom they could share a ride.
My car is 17 years old. I keep it because I can actually service it myself. It has no stupid computers and no fuel injection, the latter I'm told, requires periodic servicing to retain their pollution efficiency. Although I haven't any link to a research article I read a few years ago, that same article stated that an old Morris Minor built in 1948 and with an engine in good condition, was easily able to out perform a modern vehicle with a comparatively small engine in relation to pollution at the exhaust pipe. I'm guessing that this is because todays smaller engines are designed to extract as much usable energy as possible, but pump through much more fuel in the process when pushed hard. This is proved by the fact that although we have faster and more powerful small cars, the fuel efficiency has improved little since the old Morris Minor was produced over 50 years ago.
Nope, tax bigger engines for all it's worth. Trades people and farmers won't be affected since if they're in a legitimate business, they can claim it back on tax. It might also keep some of our "rev-head" teenagers alive a lot longer.

“I am all for getting V8's and other gas guzzler's off the road as they are wasteful…”

Good Alzo. So then, how come you are against financial incentives to help this along?

“Rather than pinging people on engine configuration the sting should be on the car's consumption.”

But you are against any increase in fuel tax!

It doesn’t seem to compute.

“Sounds like Ludwig doesn't like all those ‘Mexicans’ moving into his beloved state. A personal bugbear?”

I think you know perfectly well what my concerns (and those of many others as often expressed on this forum) are with continuous population growth in Queensland, Australia and the world

I am against an increase in fuel tax as I am not against personal transportation. I am not worried about the perceived CO2 problem. I am against cars that use more fuel than they need to for ascetic reasons. Sure make all cars more efficient, as long as we can still have transportation. Don't take us back to the horse and buggy, remember animals produce methane and lots of it.

As for the continous population growth in Queensland. What if Australia's population was stable and/or declining but Queensland's population was still increasing due to redistribution. Is this a problem? Shouldn't people be free to choose where they want to live? Do you support regional population caps/quotas? Who decides how many and who to let into "your" region?

Alzo,

On the front page of today's Australian there was a news item that the Bracks government in Victoria is building a big desalination plant and that, as a result of it, consumers' water bills are going to double. The plant wouldn't be needed if politicians had not been enthusiastically boosting the population through mass migration and now through the baby bonus as well. We now have a 1.4% population growth rate, giving us a population doubling time of 49.5 years. Bracks is all in favour of this and has been trying to get as much of the growth for Melbourne as possible. Ordinary people, who, far from benefiting from the growth, have had their quality of life reduced by more crowding and higher housing costs, disproportionately get to pay for it, because utilities take a larger slice of their income than is true for the rich.

Interstate migration is really no different. If the fact that you have moved to a particular area of Queensland is creating diseconomies of scale for the existing residents like Ludwig, then they have every right to object and to see that the extra costs are levied on you on a user pays basis.