Re: $4b transport plan to ease petrol heat

["Tezza" <tezza2000@dingoblue.net.au>]

"Anthony Morton"
"Tezza"
>
> >>I beg your pardon! Car drivers *more* than pay their bloody way. Both the
NSW
> >>and Federal governments collect far more in fuel taxes than is spent on
roads.
>
> Actually this is a fallacy.  According to the RACV (Victorian motor lobby),
> $8.6 billion in fuel excise was collected by Australian governments in the
> 1996/97 financial year.  And according to the Australian Local Government
> Association (a body of local council road engineers) the total amount spent
> on roads in the following year by all three levels of government - federal,
> state and local - was exactly the same: $8.6 billion.


Yet the NRMA says differently, quite often, with no denial by any tier of
government.



> Anyway, even if petrol tax did provide extra revenue beyond that required
for
> building and maintaining roads, there's no reason why governments shouldn't
> derive revenue from this source as much as any other.  Do you also believe
> that all gambling taxes should be spent on poker machines?

Poker machines aren't owned by the government and provide no public benefit. I
think they should be outlawed.