Not going to be voting National - I’d prefer a chronically underfunded public healthcare system to a US-style insurance driven private system - but:
- The EV RUC exemption was supposed to be removed when the fleet reached 2% EVs - it did that ~6 months ago, but the government decided not to cos it’s a bad look to do just before the election
- The RUC charges are what pays for road maintenance along side fuel taxes - the exemption has to go away at some point
National want to go to a RUCs for everyone system, which I think is the best way to handle vehicles that have multiple fuel sources such as plug in hybrids.
I have always though that RUC for all was a much better system. Having it built into fuel as an extra tax is dumb.
A big V8 that gets 15l/100km and weighs the same as a prius that gets 5l/100km are paying vastly different amounts of tax for a very similar amount of wear and tear.
Another example is our people mover (Mazda Premacy) gets around 10-11l/100km, once the kids are a bit bigger we will get a smaller much more efficient car, the wear and tear caused by our Premacy is not more than a Prius/Tesla/Focus/Corolla…yet we pay more in tax than any of those vehicles.
Just a follow on from your health comment.
If our health system is certain to become private, I for sure hope that:
- ACC remains, at minimum as-is.
- there is a regulation and standardisation for basic health insurance needs (more like the Swiss system than US free for all).
- there is still some sort of safety net system for those who cannot afford it.
Of course, I’d prefer a public health system.
I read that by 1 April next year it was expected to reach 1.7% but National decided that was close enough. Where do I find the figure about it already being 2%?
Edit: Oh, it’s counting plug-in hybrid. Currently about 1.4% BEV and 0.6% PHEV. Not quite 2% yet, it’s at 1.96% as at August 2023.
