Fuel tax coming for Auckland
Auckland motorists may be digging into their wallets to pay a new fuel tax within six months to help fund transport infrastructure.
The incoming Transport Minister, Labour’s Phil Twyford, said the fuel tax would contribute ‘‘about 10 per cent’’ of an expected $15 billion, 10-year Auckland transport programme.
The tax is likely to be 10c per litre.
Light rail
Central to Labour’s plans is a ‘‘21st century, rapid-transit network’’ including light rail, or trams, along key Auckland roads, Twyford said.
‘‘It will give Aucklanders a congestion-free, alternative to driving, to get roads moving again.’’
Twyford said the Government would change the law to allow a regional petrol tax and then it would be up to the Auckland Council to decide when it wanted to levy the tax.
Both current Auckland Mayor Phil Goff and his two-term super city predecessor Len Brown have advocated for a fuel tax for years.
Twyford set his timeframe for passing the legislation as ‘‘within four to five months’’.
Council controlled Auckland Transport is currently investigating several light rail routes from the Auckland waterfront’s Wynyard Quarter through Manukau and Dominion roads to Auckland Airport.
Labour has gone further: its election manifesto includes installing light rail from the central city to west Auckland’s Westgate within 10 years.
Hardest hit
Mangere Budgeting and Family Support chief executive Darryl Evans said the city’s poorest families would be among those hardest hit by the new tax.
Since poorer families tended to live in the southern and western most suburbs, they also often faced the longest commutes to jobs and a petrol tax cost them heavily.
For those who had no choice to drive, they would start pooling car use with friends and family to share costs.
‘‘Traditionally, when fuel prices go up people will use their car an awful lot less,’’ Evans said.
But it was also in the best interests of those families to have improvement of the super city’s public transport services, because the status quo of long journeys caused by road congestion and fragmented bus routes hurt them most, Evans said.
‘‘We can’t get our clients into jobs because of poor public transport.
‘‘If you can’t even get to job interviews on time because of late buses, then something must be done.’’
Many of his service’s south Auckland clients wanted to work in Auckland central or further but could not because of poor public transport, Evans said.
One client said he had to catch three connecting buses to and from his minimum-wage central city job.
The new Labour/NZ First coalition government’s promised minimum wage hike to $20 per hour would offset higher Auckland petrol and public transport costs, Evans believed.
Child Poverty Action Group communications officer Jeni Cartwright said the group agreed transport services needed improving but services like light rail needed to reach into south Auckland.
Lumping on an extra 10c per litre on petrol, on top of GST’s existing 15 per cent, meant the poor, with lower discretionary income, would pay more.
A more ‘‘progressive’’ tax system should be considered, meaning those who could afford to pay more did so, Cartwright said.
"We can't get our clients into jobs because of poor public transport.'' Mangere Budgeting and Family Support chief executive Darryl Evans
Business case
The Automobile Association is not ‘‘in principle’’ opposed to an Auckland regional fuel tax.
Its infrastructure and Auckland transport spokesman Barney Irvine said business cases for expensive public transport works like light rail must be consulted on. ‘‘We want to see really clear business cases, we’d like Aucklanders to have a say on it.’’