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. 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.
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.