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INCREASED prices paid for “high emission vehicles” will hurt the sector that generates wealth for the country, Federated Farmers spokesperson on transport and roading, Mark Hooper said this week.
“The original ute tax was a very unpopular imposition on the rural community, so one can only assume that this is going to exacerbate that feeling among farmers and tradies,” Mark said.
He was commenting on changes to legislation controlling clean car discounts, announced earlier this week.
One of these turned out to be a hike in the cost of vehicles regarded as “high emitters,” those releasing 192 grams of CO2 per km, or more.
The Kiwi motoring press reported this would snare utes used by farmers and tradies as a primary work vehicle.
The new law will move the maximum penalty now paid by this group ($5175), up to a maximum of $6900 for new vehicles and from $2875, up to $3450, for a used import.
Meanwhile, the Government would invest a further $100 million in the 2023 Budget to expand subsidies to EVs and plug-in hybrids, with the changes affecting vehicles registered from July 1 this year.
Mark pointed out that at the time it was introduced there were really no options in terms of a viable alternative vehicle which ran on electricity.
There was still nothing for those looking for an alternative low-emitting work horse, with the kind of range, load and towing capacity that farmers and tradies required.
“I don’t see that that situation has dramatically changed – the problem of having no viable alternative still remains,” he said.
“Now the Crown is to increase the Clean Car Discounts grant by $100 million in the 2023 budget.
So that extra $100 million will be taken from ute users across the board and used to subsidise another sector of our society.
“That is part of the fundamental problem. If they are going to generate $100 million from the ute users and what have you, then people might be more comfortable with that if they saw it addressing the fundamental problem we have, which is the quality of our roads and improving infrastructure.
These have vastly deteriorated in the last couple of years.
“So we are in a worse situation, but we are now subsidising the wrong component of society it would seem.”
Mark said if it was a question of reducing emissions, the ETS should be the main instrument to achieve this.
“High users of diesel and petrol are already paying their share of tax via the ETS, so this is a double-up in that sense.
“The flipside of that is that if we really want to work hard towards reducing emissions then that should be able to be driven by the market at the retail EV end.
“Instead, what is happening is that from a rural perspective we are creating a distorted playing field again.
“It is the same problem that farmers have been facing on all sorts of fronts, particularly around emissions.
Government policies are distorting the marketplace in so many ways. It’s leading, for example, to the blanket afforestation of a lot of our pastoral farms.
“And here again, on a smaller scale, we have a similar sort of thing happening, where the market has been distorted. And while the reasoning may seem justified, the market should be able to decide [the cost of EVs], especially when you have the ETS as the primary instrument to limit emissions.
“The subsidy is distorting the purchase of EVs and so one has to ask, are we actually reflecting the true demand for them within the market?”
