I'm really glad you've written this article Paul.
It's really a 'no brainer' - if ever there is a case of 'user should pay' proportionally it is vehicle taxes on fuel. Fuel use is proportional or roughly proportional' to the costs of:
- Kms driven i.e. use of road infrastructure
- Road use is proportional to likelihood of having an accident
so ACCIDENT INSURANCE should also be levied on fuel
- Pollution
- Carbon emissions
- Vehicle size - footprint - parking space
- AggresSivity - likelihood of cuasing death or serious diability in a collision.

Out fuel taxes are the 4th lowest of 29 OECD nations - only USA, Canada and Mexico are cheaper. http://www.aip.com.au/pricing/internationalprices.htm

I am staying in the US and believe you me, $1/ L fuel gives nothing but negatives - traffic jams and more polluting 3 tonne SUV's on the road, which are a menace to smaller vehicles and cyclists. Cheap fuel only makes some people want to have huge vehicles and use them as shopping trolleys.

NZ has > $2/ Litre fuel and the poor still drive there (I've also lived in NZ for over a year). Difference is you tend to see more 'people mover' vans and small cars and more people riding in each vehicle.

It makes much more sense to raise more tax on fuel than to increase income tax. Fuel tax needs to be raised from about 48c currently to about $1 per litre (NZ's level of fuel taxation).

While I agree, I am considering getting an electric motorbike next year, a Zero DS, so I hope this is introduced

Yeah go for it, I'll trade in the jalopy on an eclectic scooter/shopping trolley!

Seriously, we need to crack down on unregistered vehicles, given many wouldn't pass a roadworthy and hence the principle reason they are run unregistered?

Queensland are introducing a new sticker free system, which will no doubt expose many unregistered drivers, who in all likelihood, will immediately forfeit their death trap rust buckets.

That said, it's nice for city folk, with a veritable smorgasbord of public transport options, to argue for increased fuel tax.
But what about those of us here in the bush, who already pay well over the odds for petrol and have no viable public transport option.

The problem with extremely narrow circular thinking; it invariably comes up with a one size fits all approach, which in many cases is highly inappropriate; or worse, further and unfairly attacks the poor/borderline bankrupts!

Here's a nice Chrissy present, a bigger fuel bill!

Ah well, there'll be no presents under the tree this years kids, some well off fat cat senior bureaucrat has decided to appropriate them, via the petrol bowser!

What a splendid idea!
Rhrosty.

On the surface that sounds a simple solution but I don't think it is fair and equitable at all. Mainly because the cost input of fuel going up will add to price of all goods already inflated due to the RET on energy particularly electricity.

Solution I think fair, is that police vehicles all be equipped with on board computers that can tag an uninsured unpaid rego vehicle as they do in most US state.

In the UK working I had to have insurance before being allowed to register any vehicle - which is not the case in OZ and should be.

I dont agree with the insurance within the rego at all. Too open to being rorted and an imposition not necessary in other countries AFAIK. Minimum third party insurance should cover this accident insurance. I like the idea of less premium for less usage.

Currently live in Tassie and the number of bald tyres I see in car parks is disturbing as no yearly check on safety as in NSW whose cars when I was in cars in WA were premium as trade-ins as always superior and roadworthy even the old bangers. So nationwide but inexpensive yearly road worthy examination either by licensed garages or public servants who do the current over the pits now is late paying etc. But it would save lives with braking as well as lights at night Tassie with no lights on highways bad lighting in eyes in a problem. Rural mainly unlike most states. And often single carriageways.

Whilst at it also dont you agree that medical conditions which preclude driving should be notified by the Doctor? Privacy would kick in another subject but one which causes more problems than fixes.

And is it well past time we had one registry for vehicles for the nation not just state. So vehicle born and keeps same plate until it goes to car heaven and plate is destroyed. Save a lot of bad happenings and back on the road after written off etc

That would open up some interesting options. I'd like to have a smaller vehicle for many of my trips which are mostly single person, little or no cargo but that smaller vehicle would not cater for the times I nedd to carry a bigger load, tow a trailer etc. Paying primarily on the basis of fuel might make that more viable (not sure how it could or would work for general insurance though). A lot of factors involved in the cost of general insurance.

I wonder how many of those far larger vehicles heading into park for the day might stay at home as well if the standing cost of ownership for an exta vehicle was a lot lower.

R0bert

Excellent point, R0bert.

In the past I advocated for dual-registrations, where for a small extra fee over the cost of a regular registration, one can register two cars provided that only one of them is on the road at any given time.

(note that when one car is being serviced/fixed, the garage has its own registration arrangements, so the other car can also be on the road while the garage-people take the first for a test-drive)

But besides that, revenue should be collected at the pump instead and insurance should be possible through any insurance company. Then, insurance companies could for example elect to insure a car for that many kilometres rather than per annum.

I do recall this sad case where a lady left her car registered in the name of her elderly mother who was no longer driving. She used to renew the registration every year, but then her mother suddenly died and registration-time occurred a few days later - and the rego-office refused to receive payment in the name of the deceased. Inheritance procedures take several months, during which the lady could not drive her car. Would you not continue to drive anyway in such a case?

I think it's a great idea. I have 3 vehicles, which most years would not do 3000 kilometres each, although occasionally one might get to to 6 or so. It would certainly reduce my rego bill.

Similarly there are insurance companies in the UK who insure the driver, who can then drive any vehicle nominated on the one policy. This is great, as it keeps costs down, & works well, as you can only drive one car at a time. It also stops the kids borrowing the family car, unless you are silly enough to insure them.

On the other hand, before I retired my commute was 150Km a day, & with my ladies running about 65Km it would have been expensive.

The worst thing with such ideas, it would have to be collected by the commonwealth, & the distribution would then become doubtful. I would have been very vocal in resistance to the GST, if I had known it was going to be used to prop up the failed states, Tasmania & South Australia. I think something similar would be bound to happen with the vote buying facility it offers.

In passing, we would be well advised to seriously resist any increase in GST rates or range of goods, unless we get a guarantee that all moneys collected will go back to the states who contributed them. It is time to make the failed states pay for their own stupidity in discouraging industry & jobs.

Great to see there's general support here for making license/ insurance costs payable on fuel rather than annually.

Mars.. "nationwide but inexpensive yearly road worthy examination either by licensed garages' -is good policy too. Has been compulsory in NZ for decades - their roads are so steep and winding that it is simply too risky to have vehicles with poor brakes or steering.

Rhosty I agree that its unfair for country people to pay more for fuel than those in the city (having lived and worked half my life in country towns).

How about a congestion tax levied only at city fuel outlets? This would bring parity to city and country prices.

I disagree that country people have no options. In the towns I lived in there were bus and or train services at least daily to the city.

Also, it's not as if you can't do things in small cars. Even farmers and tradies can have a small or electric vehicle for many trips, where they don't have to carry a load. My wife and I drove our 1 litre car from Perth to Sydney and back via Melbourne, with all our camping gear, averaging 100 kph with the a/c on.

Your country towns must be pretty big Roses1. All the towns I know, even near the cities have no public transport other than school busses. Adults of course are not permitted to ride on them.

After that damn fool Goss came to power he removed the passenger rail services from most country areas. In many towns, with no car you were every bit as trapped in the town as any middle ages surf.

I would love to know the ethnic component of crimes involving driving without a license, and driving an unregistered vehicle.

In 1993, the various ethnic lobby groups successfully lobbied the federal government to prevent the Australian Bureau of Statistics from collecting, collating, and analysing any statistics on ethnic related crime.

The result in my own city of Sydney, is that those following the news have to piece together news items to figure out who is committing the crimes. What ethnicity an offender is, in say a rape case, can only be deduced when his family turn up at court and promptly attack the news crews. Or you might figure out what is going on when a report comes in that states that the Police in Bankstown routinely arrest unlicensed drivers, by the simple expedient of standing on the courthouse steps,and watching those who have just lost their licenses get in their cars and drive away.

John Cleese's most famous "Faulty Towers" sketch was his order to his hotel staff to "don't mention the war" to visiting German guests. Not to be outdone in pure lunacy, our police and politicians have instated a "don't mention the "I" word when it comes to terrorism and a complete contempt for the laws of NSW.

Similarly, a news report can come in saying that the NSW Police are concerned about the number of "African" drivers caught driving unlicensed and unregistered. The term "African" can be race neutral as the police can pretend that the term "Africans" could include Boers and white Rhodesians. Ex Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon used the same scam to hide the extent of crime caused by Sudanese and Somalis living in Melbourne by including white Africans in the statistics of "African" crime in Melbourne.

Hey Paul Davies. Instead of dreaming up novel ways of collecting road taxes, which will not do anything about unlicensed drivers anyway, why don't we just exclude those ethnicities from immigrating to Australia who are most prone to this sort of behaviour?

Rego is more than just revenue raising. It is also ensuring that both the car and owner are road worthy.

I do support the 3rd party insurance being funded from a fuel levy though.

I've said for years that rego should be scrapped in favor of a fuel levy, meaning the more one drives, the more they pay for road use. What on earth could be fairer than that!

Il give two examples of truck rego's that are out of balance, a Lynfox truck, and a logging truck.

The Lynfox truck operates 24/7 365 days of the year while a logging truck is lucky to operate for six months of the year due to weather restrictions, yet both pay the same rego fees. Ridiculous!

Firstly, from what I understand money the government earns in revenue for fuel tax greatly exceeds the amount of money they spend on building roads and their maintenance.
So give us back all the money you stole.
Or start using it to fund the road projects you sell to private consortium's.
People that travel on toll roads daily pay 2 or 3 times the amount of rego as people that don't.
Lets face it they are all public roads, toll roads or not.
Only then can we think about a fairer system (inclusive of the word 'fair') such as pay-as-you-go registration with fuel.
It seems reasonable that someone who uses the road a lot more than someone who doesn't should pay a larger share.
I agree its a fairer system, but the government will want to take the rego-payment details every time I put fuel in, therefore tracking my whereabouts.
I don't have anything to hide, but they have no need to pry. (Technology should empower us not imprison us.)

Ultimately, the government thieves make enough money stealing from us under the current system, the only way they would change it is if someone suggested an idea where they could steal more.

The system is unfair.
It makes smokers help pay for the health care of non-smokers.
It charges more tax on pre-mixed alcoholic drinks to give the impression it cares about people, when its just a cash grab.
It gives free needles to junkies whilst diabetics still pay for them.
It charges a departure tax just for right to leave.

When the government says its looking for ways to improve things that's just code for looking for ways to take more from people and give to themselves, because they never actually do a better job of anything. Our deficit proves me right.

The petrol rego tax does seem a reasonable method.

My next car will almost certainly be electric, so there is another
complication.

A friend has an electric car and drives it to work every day about
30km a day, plus weekend and night driving.
It costs him $0.13 per km. He connected a KWH meter to his charger which he connects to off peak power.
It is very smooth and nippy to drive also.
How does it go ? Straight past the service station !

There is no need for more taxes. Just create your own debt free money via Govt owned banks.

This whole discussion is based on a false premise, which is that unregistered vehicles are difficult to detect and thus that the offenders tend to go unpunished.

This may have been true till several years back, but is certainly not now.

In NSW, every Highway Patrol vehicle and many fixed locations have automatic numberplate recognition connected to computers which flag unregistered, uninsured and stolen vehicles. They also detect, in two or three seconds, vehicles which are owned by those with cancelled and suspended licences and which have been used in crimes. Each automatic toll station includes this type of device, to record non-paying vehicles and to determine the appropriate toll for commercial vehicles. The point-to-point trip measuring cameras also incorporate numberplate recognition: every vehicle is recorded, every trip, along with time and location.

There are thousands of these devices in use at any given time, so detection, which was once impractical, is now certain.

One reason for the current high statistics may well be that many of those who until recently have not been apprehended are now being cleaned up at wholesale rates.

The author's proposal would also saddle accident-free drivers with the costs attributable to those with poor claims history, with no opportunity for insurance rebates. That is unfair and just plain silly.

As long ago as 1968, when I first studied traffic engineering, the merits and costs of fuel taxes instead of scaled registration charges were discussed. The truth then still applies today: litre for litre, heavy trucks cause many times more damage to roads than do passenger vehicles. The author's proposal would simply result in another hidden subsidy for the heaviest, slowest and most damaging sector of the road transport industry at the expense of other users and taxpayers generally.

JohnBennetts - Good point about number plate recognition.

Re large trucks - shifting license taxes to fuel is not an insurmountable problem - no doubt Govt departments have estimated the actual road damage per litre. Apply that, add insurance, congestion road trauma, carbon and noise costs that are currently externalised.

Then remove the diesel fuel rebate and apply the same tax as applied to petrol. If the above costs still are not covered, add an additional tax for diesel at truck-stops, or if that impractical apply it through the license fee.

That could easily be done. The only obstacle is political - the powerful road transport lobby and their nonsense claim that food costs would go through the roof if fuel taxes are increased.

Roses1 the road transport does pay the same taxes on their fuel as the motorist. It is only off road users, & only some of them, who don't pay road tax. Of course the greens want this misconception perpetuated, so lead the misinformation.

They also claim the lack of road tax on fuel used on farms & mines is a subsidy.

The whole thing was a rather sore point for us in the marine tourist industry. We were paying road tax on the fuel we used running around the ocean, where it was highly unlikely we were causing any wear & tear on public roads.

In Queensland, this year, the state government have done away with registration stickers that go on windscreens ; doing away with red tape, an efficiency measure apparently.

So, a police officer can no longer glance at the windscreen, of a passing or parked car - and see from the colour coded sticker that the registration is current - he must have access to an online device to have the reggo plate checked to see if the registration has been paid.

That's efficiency, clever, eh ?

Wantok's concerns have been considered and have been answered.

As I stated above, registration status of vehicles and much more, right down to the paint colour and vehicle make and style are available to police in two or three seconds via the numberplates.

The stickers can be misleading if they are displayed on the incorrect vehicle. The NSW and Qld and, presumably, other governments have decided not to go to the trouble and expense of issuing windscreen stickers for light vehicles.

Back in the day when I owned a number of vintage sports cars [I hasten to add that that was also in the days when they were dirt cheap!].
I only had one rego sticker and one set of plates on a registered vehicle, the sticker was on a piece of glass that fitted into a trailer sticker holder [for the car that had only aero screens].
When i wanted to take out an unregistered car I swapped the plates and stuck the rego sticker, on its own bit of glass, onto the inside of the windscreen with a smear of Vasolene.

Never got caught, but now-a-days 'things has changed' and a police car can scan your car and be after you in a flash.

The NRMA in NSW gives away windscreen/window stickers to members that one can write the rego date on as a reminder just in case the mail goes astray.

Yes wantok & Is Mise, they can scan, or see the rego label colour, but they don't bother unless there is a reason to raise suspicion.

My son has now for 11 years driven his Queensland registered cars in Victoria & NSW. As defence personnel he was entitled to keep his car registered where he wanted, when posted interstate. He has never been queried, despite the fact that the vehicle would have been unregistered after 3 months if civilian owned. The number plate & the rego sticker should have been obvious.

My youngest has been in Darwin for 11 months. She was working for the army, but was only a civilian employee. She was too slack to change her registration to NT from QLD, & was never queried.

I believe that only those that raise suspicion through some action are checked.

Incidentally Is Mise, all my Triumphs were the same colour, which may still fox them.

Hi, Hasbeen.

Things have moved on from the days when you only got caught if you drew attention to yourself.

Infra-red automatic numberplate scanning plus mobile satellite links back to the central registry changed all that several years back.

I'm not in the auto industry, but still have met several people who have been booked because their trailer was a day out of rego, or their car was a few days over - or longer. They were caught in the early days of the new technology. All the police had to do was to sit at the side of the road and call ahead to their mates up the road a bit when a vehicle of interest came past.

In NSW, the penalty for driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle is about $100, added to which is the cost and inconvenience of getting a vehicle inspection immediately, plus perhaps an overnight stay in a motel while any defects are attended to. The whole exercise can cost a couple of grand, a day or two out of your life, plus points and licence suspension.

And it is virtually automatic.

Like Hasbeen, in my youth I owned several Austin 8 convertibles. Like Hasbeen, I used to swap the plates and windscreens (only 4 screws needed).
Like Hasbeen, I was lucky.

Those days have gone forever.

Oops!

My typo. The penalties for driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle in NSW amount to about $1000, not $100.

Add a full roadworthiness inspection (Called a "Blue Slip" or something similar - not just the customary "pink slip") if the vehicle is more than a couple of weeks over, if you can find an authorised inspector and things start to grow.

Defects, whether picked up by the police or the inspector, have to be attended to immediately or within several days. The whole thing quickly becomes out of control; an unmitigated disaster, especially if away from home and travelling with children.