Road charge a jolt for electric car drivers

Drivers of electric cars will pay a kilometre-based charge to ensure they contribute to the upkeep of South Australian roads.

The road usage charge for electric vehicles will combine a standard registration-style fee and a separate usage-based component, which will require motorists to use a log book.

Drivers of electric and zero-emission cars will be forced to pay a kilometre-based charge to ensure they contribute to the upkeep of roads, the South Australian government has announced in a state budget with national implications.

The road usage charge is the only new revenue measure in a budget that sets an SA record for public spending, framed around a $16.7bn stimulus package against the backdrop of $33bn in state debt and negative economic growth of 0.75 per cent.

Defending the green vehicles charge, Treasurer Rob Lucas revealed that SA had been in talks with other states and territories about how such a scheme could work, saying it was designed to end the unfairness where electric car owners pay no fuel excise.

South Australian Treasurer Rob Lucas says ‘someone has to pay for road upgrades and it makes sense that it’s the people who use the roads­. Picture: Kelly Barnes

The amount of the charge is yet to be determined but it will combine a standard registration-style fee and a separate usage-based component, which will require motorists to use a log book.

“Someone has to pay for road upgrades and it makes sense that it’s the people who use the roads,” Mr Lucas said.

“It’s not for me to out the other states or territories, but I’m pretty confident that over the next 12 months at least one or two other jurisdictions will announce similar road user charges.”

The new charge is one of several surprises in a budget which, aside from sticking its hands in the pocket of green motorists, lavishes unprecedented amounts of cash elsewhere.

In the first Australian budget brought down by a state Liberal government since COVID-19 pandemic, the normally frugal Mr Lucas tore up the political rule book and vowed to spend big to protect jobs in the short term, and worry about restoring state finances down the track.

The 2020-21 SA budget papers reveal the pandemic blew a $33bn hole in the state economy, an amount 10 times greater than the previous high watermark of financial catastrophe, the $3.15bn State Bank collapse in 1991.

 

Mr Lucas described the figures as “eye-watering” but said the SA Liberal government would take a “whatever is needed” approach to save as many jobs and businesses as possible, framed around the unprecedented $16.7bn stimulus package. That outlay contains $4bn in new money for public infrastructure spending, including an $850m “tradies package” which Mr Lucas hailed as “an adrenaline hit” to fast-track outstanding maintenance work on government assets.

For the private sector, the most business-friendly measure is $233m in payroll tax relief, which will provide the greatest assistance to small businesses with a payroll below $4m.

Those businesses will pay no payroll tax at all from April this year to June next year.

The bottom-line figures in the budget make for bleak reading — aside from the $33.17bn debt figure, SA has also recorded a $2.59bn deficit, destroying the work the Liberals did in returning SA to surplus after ending 16 years of Labor rule in 2018.

Instead, SA will now stay in the red until 2022-23, when a $406m surplus is forecast.

“Whilst these numbers are eye-watering for any treasurer they are mouth-watering for workers and businesses as they are the means of saving thousands of jobs and businesses in SA,” Mr Lucas told parliament on Tuesday night. “No one ever envisaged we would confront a challenge as sinister and momentous as a global pandemic.

“Once-thriving businesses fell to their knees, thousands of workers lost their jobs … this budget needs to jump-start our economy through the largest economic stimulus in our state’s history.”

The most popular spending measure in the budget will be the promised fix of Main South Road, the congested artery running from Adelaide’s north to south, with the long-awaited final stretch to be completed by 2030 through $8.9bn for tunnels and lowered motorways through the western suburbs.