Thread: pay as you go tax

I can just see the country driver getting slugged big time !

Wages are lower in the bush, fuel prices and groceries higher, utilities like electricity much higher (even when you live near the power stations !) and now this ??!!

I'm going to Tamworth tomorrow for business and a 'big' shop, that's a 200km round trip for things I can't get in the towns 30 and 40km away, let alone my little village of 800 or so souls.

Another ill conceived and potentially expensive to implement (particularly if it's 'weighted' depending on where you live) tax.

I guess cars these days are too fuel efficient to raise enough tax to pay for roads...
would they remove any tax on fuel if they bring this in?

what would they charge in country/remote areas?

I thought the talk was to get rid of the tax on fuel
(I can really see that happening)
and replace with PAYG.

Does the horse and cart still have right of way on the road ?

I started life in them thingy's, good way to go out.

I can see a business of disconnecting the tracking systems.

When I worked in the international submarine cable repair section of Telstra, we paid to have tracking devices fitted to a number of trawlers working out of Sydney because they kept trawling in restricted areas and across the international submarine cables.

A damaged cable can cost literally millions to repair. A large ship is required to retrieve the cable.

The tracking systems reported the trawlers' positions to AFMA (G'day Garrycol), not to us. We could ask for the data if a cable was damaged.

The trawler captains would disconnect the trackers and claim they'd failed. It was odd how they came good when the trawlers returned to port.

Fortunately, our patrol vessel had very good radar and could track multiple targets and the skipper could pick when a trawler was trawling just from its speed and track shown on the radar.

Originally Posted by p38arover

The tracking systems reported the trawlers' positions to AFMA (G'day Garrycol), not to us. We could ask for the data if a cable was damaged.

The trawler captains would disconnect the trackers and claim they'd failed. It was odd how they came good when the trawlers returned to port.

And then they would be prosecuted for being at sea without a serviceable tracker.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the privacy angle yet.


Big Brother anyone ?

What a great idea PAYG roads. Can you imagine the increase in the cost of everything you buy because it is carried in commercial transport slugged at 20c/km.

Obviously invented by white collar workers who catch public transport from their inner city residences. They want the convenience of a car on weekends and the right to park it on the street in congested suburbs for free but don't want to pay their share of the costs of the roads network.

The registration fees are purchasing the right to use the road whenever you please, not something to be charged at a rate for mileage.

There is however some merit in congestion charges and additional charges to use metropolitan roads during peak periods. Urban dwellers are already charged more for their registration/greenslip than rural dwellers.