The BFD | Will You Be Happy with the Government Tracking Your Every Kilometre?

National started looking at it a few years ago, Phil Twyford worked on it in 2019 and Michael Wood has been continuing the work to date. It seems that everyone is trying to figure out how to keep the cash flowing from the long-suffering cash-cow, the motorist.

Stuff advises that the Ministry of Transport has been quietly conducting a “future of the revenue system” work programme, for most of the government’s last term.

Essentially what they are looking at is how they will replace the current funding, around $4 billion per year, when the national fleet becomes powered by electrons.

Currently petrol vehicles are taxed by way of a Fuel Excise Duty (FED) which is collected at the pump when you pay for your gas. Hence the crazy cost per litre of well over $2 at the moment, given that most of that price is currently tax. There is currently no reliable way to avoid paying this tax.

Diesel vehicles are taxed by way of Road User Charges RUC which vary depending on the weight of the vehicle. There are of course illegal ways to avoid this tax but it all can be very costly if you are eventually caught.

The various governments are of course trying their level best to get us all into electric vehicles so they are cognisant of the fact that, if they somehow are successful with that goal, they will lose a great deal of the funding that they require to keep our roads maintained and developed.

You may remember Simon Bridges expounding back in 2016 that we would have 64,000 EVs on our roads by 2021. How’s that tracking? Well, let’s just say that there are currently more motorcycles on our roads than there are EVs. Heck, there are almost as many busses! But hey, there’s nearly 20,000 of the fidget spinners out there now, although probably half of them are old Nissan Leafs that aren’t long for this world.

Of course in reality the government knows the big numbers will likely never happen but they are spending plenty of time – and plenty of your dollars – trying to work out how the potential funding shortfall might be mitigated. The current exemption from Road User Charges for EVs expires at the end of this year but I think we can count it as read that Michael Wood will extend that out, probably for at least another election cycle or two.

One of the MoT’s big ideas involves phasing out the FED and RUC and putting all vehicles onto a GPS like system not unlike the current E road system used for some fleets here in NZ.

These types of systems are becoming more popular with fleet operators here for a variety of reasons such as making the RUCs easier to negotiate, especially for vehicles with a portion of their driving being off-road, such as logging fleets etc.

Some of the biggest reasons touted for their use however revolve around how much they can change the behaviour of their drivers. ERoad claims users show a huge 38 percent reduction of ‘speeding events’. This of course is down to the fact that the drivers realise they are constantly being watched so are more aware of their speed.

Not only speed is measured though, any sudden braking or heavy acceleration events are also logged and depending on how the system is set up, reports are sent through to the person that cares about such things within each of those companies. Depending on how often these reports are received, the boss may start sending out the ‘please explain’ memos.

Gee, I wonder if our current government would only measure how far we have travelled, or whether they would also be measuring whether you were a couple of km/h over the speed limit, were too fast around a corner, overtook in a dodgy area etc?

What would stop them simply sending out a ticket for these offences, or other such things as driving with an expired WoF or Rego?

The new ‘smart’ speed cameras are already collecting data on WoF and Rego offences and that information can already be used to create offence notices; they simply haven’t turned that part of the system on yet. You can rest assured that this will come in very soon. You can imagine how easy it would be to use GPS data, alongside the currently held NZTA information surrounding ownership and vehicle data, and you might be getting a WoF ticket every day.

These cameras are watching you, they know where you live. The BFD.

This would of course result in a lot of people rushing out to get their WoF’s done which might be fine (presuming that there are still WoF examiners around as the NZTA are currently planning to put CCTV cameras into every WoF inspector’s premises so plenty are looking at pulling out).

But of course this would also create a massive number of offences around the country. You may well say that if you can’t afford to get a WoF, then you shouldn’t be on the road; fair enough, but I’m sure that there are plenty of people who don’t have one, simply because it is getting too hard to get them. I personally know of plenty of people who just don’t bother anymore and run around without one.

So plenty of instant criminals will be created, and of course the people who are more likely to be driving illegal vehicles will be ‘the poor’.

This, funnily enough, will probably be the reason why the government’s surveillance-based plans will never come to fruition, because ‘the poor’ are apparently more likely to be brown-skinned or imported. Any GPS system will impact more on those Maori, Pasifika and refugee people so cries of ‘Racism’ will ring out across the country.

This in itself will be fun to watch. Seeing the likes of our current socialists tying themselves in knots trying to justify a new tax, while people like Mahuta, Marama and Golriz tell them that they are evil racists, will be very satisfying.

But what do you good readers all think? I can’t imagine too many of you think the Reds would ever play fair with this sort of thing, but I wonder what else they could do to extract more cash from the motorist?

Interestingly the “Future of the Revenue System – Programme of Work” released under the Official Information Act has a number of other points, but it seems that ‘the most open and transparent government ever’ has chosen to heavily redact them, so they will always be a mystery to us.