Labour announced a thoroughly risky policy promise just last week.
Labour will not increase fuel tax when the Party wins the election in November.
Roads should pay for themselves through fuel taxes. But they don't. A car-free city dweller like me contributes to fixing highways through my income tax, even though drivers should be paying the full cost of their use.
The more we keep fuel taxes the same, the more our income tax goes to subsidising big trucks on our expensive-to-maintain highways.
Fuel taxes haven't increased since 2020. National opened Pandora's box last election by starving our transport fund in the name of a good bumper sticker political promise. Now it seems that Labour is on board with this.
Keeping fuel taxes stagnant will mean less money for hospitals, schools, superannuation.
Greater Auckland had a cathartic write up about those fuel tax promiess:
There are two reasons this is really bad policy-making.
... Already politicians are raiding other funds, that should go on hospitals and schools, just to maintain roads and run buses, while also promising a long list of massive new highways.
... The second is that this runs completely contradictory to the recommendations of the National Infrastructure Plan from Te Waihanga/ the Infrastructure Commission. Parties across the political spectrum have spent the past year being all ‘high and mighty’ about how much they support this plan, and how they’re finally going to move past silly partisan political posturing on infrastructure.
Henry Cooke from the Post wrote a column (paywalled) explaining the hypocrisy of the National Party criticising Labour's policy, too.
National has campaigned against fuel tax hikes quite consistently since the 2017 election - Simon Bridges called Jacinda Ardern the “fleecer in chief” for raising petrol taxes and Willis made a big deal ahead of the 2023 election of cancelling any fuel tax hikes, “in the middle of a cost of living crisis”.
I agree wholeheartedly with Cooke and the Greater Auckland team on this stuff. Promises like this are corrosive.
I'm wracking my brain as to why Labour would say something like this. To my mind, there are two potential explanations.
First explanation: Labour is playing 4D chess because fuel taxes aren't long for this world anyway.
Last year, Minister Chris Bishop announced that petrol taxes would be replaced with Road User Charges for every vehicle. As more cars run on electricity or hybrid systems, vehicles are using the road just as much but paying far less towards fixing it. Calculating contributions based on weight and distance makes more sense.
So, Labour could be technically correct that fuel taxes won't increase, because they will replace it with a new system that can appropriately cover road maintenance.
But they didn't say that.
And so, the second explanation. It might be that it sounds good, and the Parliamentary Labour Party doesn't have a vision for our transport system strong enough to withstand soundbite politics.
Ten weeks out from a general election, it's hard to know. I am really hoping that Labour provides a coherent vision for transport beyond cuts to fuel taxes and a fare cap for public transport.
Otherwise, this policy looks like a weird harbinger of Simeonism seeping further into our political landscape.
Maybe they're playing 4D chess. Maybe it's just a good line.
Either way, it's playing a dangerous game.
Further subsidising car-dependency isn't just bad for global warming: it starves everything else in our society of the funding we desperately need.
