Thread: Big Brother - a tracking device in every vehicle!?

Originally Posted by ivery819

What a joke !

They can't even get their e-tag statements correct.

You are not wrong.

A month or so after Bucko passed away and while his bike was in the police holding yard in Albury, the M5 recorded three trips he did on that bike.

I successfully disputed that claim for toll charges!

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Thanks for posting some actual figures. And of course, you know how they will fund it - initial charge of $1100 to every motorist when introduced, and rego goes up $600/year - obvious!

John

The interview I heard with the guy who is pushing this said that these charges would 'replace registration' with a true user pays system. He also said that it wasn't about raising revenue......yeah right

Sadly I thought of this sort of thing years ago when still in year 12. We had to come up with traffic control systems. Mine was replace rego with electronic inbuilt gps tracking units with the rego in them. That way you could be automatically fined for speading or the vehicle speed limited to where it was plus they would know who went where and auto shut down vehicles in restricted areas or wanted by police.

I would not like the idea to come true and would find it an insentive to do lots of river crossings.

There is always a lot of talk of "user pays".

The user already does pay. Fuel is what powers the vehicles. The more distance travelled, the more you pay!

Originally Posted by BigJon

There is always a lot of talk of "user pays".

The user already does pay. Fuel is what powers the vehicles. The more distance travelled, the more you pay!

Yes. I was nearly going to post the same. The most direct way of user pays is simply fuel tax. The more you drive, the faster you drive and the bigger your car, the more you pay.

Two problems with it

1. Does not allow for special exemptions or special higher rates for different classes of users.

2. Under the constitution, such taxes can only be imposed by the commonwealth and must be the same in all states and territories. Which means states have to look elsewhere.

In my view, a major improvement to taxing of road use would be to transfer all fixed charges (rego, insurance, sales tax on new and used cars, stamp duty) to an increased fuel tax. this would make it more practical for people to own special purpose cars. (At present, for typical cars, fuel costs represent no more than 25-30% of total running costs. The biggest proportions are fixed costs, mainly depreciation and cost of capital, but rego and insurance are quite big bites.

John

'Safety Cam' in NSW already does a lot of this, and the CSIRO has developed a vehicle recognition system for the RTA that can individually recognise some astronomical number of vehicles per hour. Of course it's only used ATM for 'research' purposes.......

Orwell was only out by a few decades....

Originally Posted by lewy

i believe the police have already tracked private mobiles,probably involves some sort of court order though.

AFP can listen in too mobile convo's and intercept messaging on the back of a court warrant on the basis of the sus law so why go to the expense of this when you can target who you like for less quids

Originally Posted by lardy

AFP can listen in too mobile convo's and intercept messaging on the back of a court warrant on the basis of the sus law so why go to the expense of this when you can target who you like for less quids

Or have a look at this proposal - which allows all internet traffic to be intercepted - without a warrant.

Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Bill 2009 - Network Protection

John