Hold on to your wallets and purses. Get your savings out of the bank and hide the cash under the bed. They’re after us again.
Australian motorists pay $1 billion in traffic and parking fines a year.
Last week in what passes for our national capital, two lads from Infrastructure Australia, Phil Davies and Adrian Dwyer, fronted a Senate inquiry. In the beautifully appointed ash and light-blue committee room, Davies told inquiry chairman, winemaker, economist and Green person Peter Whish-Wilson that Australia should replace “rego and fuel tax with a pay-as-you-go scheme”.
Basically that means your friends in Canberra put a GPS device in your cars and track every kilometre you drive. The more you drive the more you pay. The more you drive in peak hours the even more you will pay. In other words, if you’re a tradie or live in the outer suburbs — where public transport is a fantastic dream and not being on the dole means you have to drive three hours to work — you’re basically stuffed.
Whish-Wilson, who I have to say looked very ungreen in a blue suit that blended perfectly with the committee room and a striking yellow tie that certainly made a statement, seemed pretty pleased with this idea. That’s even though he and his colleagues had just been told by Davies and Dwyer that Australian public transport users are among the most subsidised in the world. So we pay more than our full share of the roads we use, public transport passengers don’t. Do you think that’s why it may be hard to get public transport properly funded and expanded?
Now let’s think about this pay-as-you go plan for a moment. First, in most capital cities we pay quite a bit as we go with road tolls. Do you think the GPS in your car will make them go away? And based on our governments’ track record, do you really think they will want to give away the $20 billion we pay each year in fuel tax? Helpful hint: only 25 per cent of that $20bn goes to roads; the rest goes to fund important projects such as decorating Senate committee rooms.
You know we could go on about how we motorists are our governments’ ATMs. But let’s not talk about the $1bn in traffic and parking fines we pay every year, how it costs $750 in rego and insurance in Victoria or all the other indirect taxes the fiscal fiends you voted in take out of our pockets.
One organisation on our side is the Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association, which represents more than 2000 businesses employing 40,000 people across automotive parts retailing, component supply and mechanical repairs. The four-As people want the big car companies to let qualified mechanics access the technical data that runs your car and provide more competition on servicing. Of course the government came up with a voluntary data sharing deal that is not working.
“The car companies are not going to voluntarily share information even though we are prepared to pay a fair price for the subscription service. We need a mandatory solution, the same as Europe and America.” the four-As says.
Of course the other thing the four-As could look at is the price of spare parts. Buy a BMW engine block from BMW in Australia, $5000. Buy it from a BMW dealer in Europe, freight it all the way to Sydney and pay $2400.
So what about our would-be protectors? Well the motoring organisations are businesses and directors are not there because they like cars and drivers. Over at NRMA Motoring and Services (as opposed to the insurance company, which is owned by IAG) directors get a total of $1 million a year. Kyle Loades, the president, gets $214,628 a year and Fiona Simson, his deputy, gets $143,153. Down in Melbourne things are a bit less transparent. Because the RACV doesn’t publish fees paid to each director, all we know is the “16 directors and 17 executives shared $10m”.
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