{"id":60589,"date":"2025-08-11T18:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T18:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/60589\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T18:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T18:12:09","slug":"road-tax-for-australian-ev-users-sensible-tanya-plibersek-says-ahead-of-key-economic-summit-electric-vehicles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/60589\/","title":{"rendered":"Road tax for Australian EV users \u2018sensible\u2019, Tanya Plibersek says ahead of key economic summit | Electric vehicles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Electric car drivers could be hit with a road tax, with the federal MP Tanya Plibersek<\/a> framing it a \u201csensible\u201d move as more people switch to EVs.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the federal government\u2019s productivity roundtable next week, the idea of a road tax has been floated.<\/p>\n

The possibility was flagged by the treasurer, Jim Chalmers<\/a>, during a speech in June. Chalmers had said he was working with the states and territories \u201con the future of road-user charging\u201d for EVs.<\/p>\n

Transport industry leaders met on Monday ahead of next week\u2019s roundtable.<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

While the federal government has maintained the issue was for states and territories, the minister for social services, Tanya Plibersek, said a tax for EV users made sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anything\u2019s happening tomorrow, but I do think it\u2019s sensible \u2026 for the states and territories, to look long term at what they do, to make sure that there\u2019s enough money to build the roads that people want to drive on,\u201d she told Seven\u2019s Sunrise program.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no secret that as the number of petrol vehicles and diesel vehicles goes down, the tax from fuel excise decreases [and] that means less money for building and maintaining roads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe states and territories have been looking at this for some time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Money collected by the fuel excise helps fund the federal budget<\/a> and is not directly allocated to roads but some motoring groups have urged governments to adopt road pricing<\/a> as EV uptake grows.<\/p>\n

Victoria tried to put in place a 2c per kilometre charge on EV users in 2023 but the proposal was overruled by the high court.<\/p>\n

New Zealand has a scheme in place for road-user charges for EVs, with petrol cars soon to be added to the tax.<\/p>\n

The Coalition senator Jane Hume said more needed to be done to fix ailing roads, which a broader road tax could achieve.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fuel excise has been a shrinking tax base, and it\u2019s one of the few taxes that\u2019s hypothecated for road maintenance,\u201d she told Sky News.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rise of EVs is something that has happened exponentially in the last few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure that those EV users are making sure that they\u2019re responsible for road maintenance in the same way that petrol and diesel car users are.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was amended on 11 August 2025. A previous version incorrectly stated that fuel excise is set aside for roads spending. It is in fact part of the federal government\u2019s consolidated revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Electric car drivers could be hit with a road tax, with the federal MP Tanya Plibersek framing it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-60589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}