Tuesday, 9 September 2025

Road user charges

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (18:28): (1921) My adjournment this evening is to the Treasurer. The topic of road user charging has been raised by the federal government’s economic roundtable, and I understand that state and territory treasurers met last week to begin discussing a coordinated approach to introducing one in the next few years. To quote the recent comments in the Guardian of Helen Rowe from Climateworks:

If designed well, [a road user charge] could do far more than just plug a revenue gap.

It could help cut congestion, reduce emissions, lower infrastructure costs and improve the overall efficiency of Australia’s transport network.

Victorian Labor’s failed experiment with road user charging shows us what not to do – a tax on electric vehicle drivers only, at a time when uptake of EVs was less than 1 per cent of new car sales. What could work better is a broad-based road user charge that applies to all vehicles, not just EVs, which can better account for the harms that vehicles do cause. Most EV drivers and experts are very open to paying their share for usage of the roads, but quite reasonably they expect that any charge is applied fairly, rather than singling them out. A road user charge that was based on vehicle weight times distance travelled could mean that people pay proportionately to the damage caused to the roads and encourage people to drive smaller and safer vehicles, rather than the American-style truckzilla utes we are seeing increasingly proliferate at suburban school drop-offs, sometimes with tragic consequences.

Petrol and diesel vehicles not only emit CO₂ that causes climate change but they also emit carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter that cause health issues when they get into people’s lungs. These pollutants contribute to over 11,000 deaths per year – 10 times the road toll from vehicle crashes – and broadly speaking, heavier vehicles produce more of this pollution than lighter vehicles. Large and heavy vehicles are also much more dangerous on our roads and far more likely to cause injury or death in collisions with pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. A weight-based road user charge would better account for these health impacts as well.

A road user charge could also present an opportunity to directly tackle traffic congestion by including a mechanism for congestion surcharging inner-city areas where congestion is worst and alternatives like walking, cycling and public transport are robust. If we get the details right, a congestion charge can be implemented in a way that makes sense for our local circumstances. Treasurer, as this nationwide conversation progresses, the action I seek is that you advocate for a road user charge that is fair, proportionate and reduces both emissions and congestion.