Freediver
You say “pollution is pollution”, but this is not quite right. Air concentrations and vehicle speeds matter, so the social harm inflicted by yet another vehicle joining an already-congested peak-hour urban road is greater than the lone driver on a freeway at midnight or a remote country road.

A proper user pays system that recovered costs from drivers would indeed have drivers on the most efficient roads paying less than others. Long, under-used and over-engineered regional roads cost a lot to build and maintain, but are politically favoured precisely because the people who benefit from them don’t carry the cost of building an maintaining them.

"You say “pollution is pollution”, but this is not quite right. Air concentrations and vehicle speeds matter, so the social harm inflicted by yet another vehicle joining an already-congested peak-hour urban road is greater than the lone driver on a freeway at midnight or a remote country road.

Fuel taxes with capture this, because fuel consumption (and thus tax incurred) will be higher when you drive during peak hour. They will capture it far more effectively than an arbitrary 'peak hour tax' with arbitrary boundaries and arbitrary start and finish times.

"A proper user pays system that recovered costs from drivers would indeed have drivers on the most efficient roads paying less than others. Long, under-used and over-engineered regional roads cost a lot to build and maintain, but are politically favoured precisely because the people who benefit from them don’t carry the cost of building an maintaining them.

A fuel tax will capture that also. A long trip on a country raod will incur far more tax than a short trip in the city.

A fuel tax will capture all of these things in a way that tolls could not even come close to. It will do so without any extra infrastructure. It will charge people according to how much they use the roads, not how many tolls they pass through.

freediver, What is the point of increasing one tax and offsetting it with a reduction in others? People will have more money to use to buy fuel...which will negate the consumption.

Or are you for example proposing the reduction of taxes which only a few wealthy people pay and making fuel costs higher so the rest of Australia pays more tax on behalf of the wealthy, who start to pay no taxes?

"freediver, What is the point of increasing one tax and offsetting it with a reduction in others?

The point is to change patterns of consumption.

"People will have more money to use to buy fuel...which will negate the consumption.

It will reduce consumption. They will not have more money, they will have roughly the same amount, because one tax goes up and one goes down. The extra money they get from the reduction in the other tax is not for the purpose of buying fuel. They can spend it on anything they like. Only an idiot would buy the same amount of fuel. If the price of fuel goes up and everything else goes down, fuel consumption will go down. Its about as basic as you can get in economics.

"Or are you for example proposing the reduction of taxes which only a few wealthy people pay and making fuel costs higher so the rest of Australia pays more tax on behalf of the wealthy, who start to pay no taxes?

No. In fact, if a consumption tax is designed to be avoided, it will most likely be carried disproportionately by the wealthy, because they will be less sensitive to it. In any case, the corresponding tax reduction *should* be designed so as to alter neither the total tax burden nor the distribution of wealth. In the short term this may not happen, but in the long term the total burden and it's relative distribution will always be adjusted independently of non-arbitrary taxes through normal political means.

There is one flaw in your "most basic economics". Fuel is a necessity (particularly in Australia-you must be a city dweller), even more so than most foods.

Free diver you are so crimson wrong! for my whole lifetime national roads groups have asked why is so little of fuel tax being returned to roads and you say an educated ques?
22 years building and fixing existing roads now union official looking after those that construct them how would I know anything about them?
My point? how many trucks travel our roads every week?
How much tax is paid by just one that uses so much fuel?
Both now and in my past job training never stopped, not so very long ago we spent less than half of what we spend now on roads, even now we do not spend as much as we take in surely you do understand that?
And do you understand Australia is not just its city's?
That some school children this morning and again tonight travel more each way to school than some city folk travel in a month?
That farm fuel bills are crippling those who pay them?
No silly story's about trains carrying our freight please the lines do not exist in most places.
Fuel tax's do you Freediver know how much tax we each pay for one single unit of fuel?
Do you know how much fuel this country uses each week?
If you are right and I am wrong why is the Pacific highway in parts still a death trap and goat track?
I truly honestly can not believe an adult is not aware we do not spend all fuel tax on roads.