Victoria's electric vehicle road tax emerges as a new Robodebt fiasco
It seems that the Victorian ‘debate’ on Road User Fees (RUC) has been described by the Victorian Government as one of two positions – those who support the RUC, and those who are painted as fully accepting the need for it and how it works, and those who complain and are painted as ‘ tax evader’. Unfortunately, this reminds me of the bad past of previous federal governments targeting beneficiaries for savings through automated (and disabled) benefit accounting systems, while characterizing recipients and advocacy groups as ‘money crooks’ or their supporters. That puts me in an awkward position, because I’m both: support RUC in general and its transition to a new form to include electric vehicles (EVs) when the EV Transition itself occurs (after all, we already paid for it based on distance traveled via a gasoline per liter tax – which will disappear as fossil fuel sales decline) and both from personal experience (and reports coming in from readers of TheDriven), find RUC Victoria’s curr