General Boards > Off Topic

Cash grab

<< < (2/4) > >>

wj957:
Understood ranmar, but my Falcon ute at 2840 GVM does no more damage to the road than any other family sized sedan/4WD etc.

Yes I do 50,000km p.a. but that just means I pay more fuel excise than the average Joe as well.

Banks are the same as gummint, if you make money, your fees go up.

And don't start me on Merchant fees for my mobile eftpos device!   :BangHead:

Waynedeane:
I don't know about that.
Although 4wds are bigger and heavier than small cars they also have bigger, wider tyres which will have a bigger footprint.   I'd be curious to know what the actual measured weight is per square cm or inch for different vehicles.    Wouldn't surprise me if most 4wds have less weight per square cm or inch as the weight is spread over a larger area.



--- Quote from: wj957 on Aug 24, 2021, 07:19:37 PM ---Understood ranmar, but my Falcon ute at 2840 GVM does no more damage to the road than any other family sized sedan/4WD etc.

Yes I do 50,000km p.a. but that just means I pay more fuel excise than the average Joe as well.

Banks are the same as gummint, if you make money, your fees go up.

And don't start me on Merchant fees for my mobile eftpos device!   :BangHead:

--- End quote ---

VALKIE:
I can understand the logic of bigger vehicles doing more damage.

But......if the roads were made properly (for purpose) then this damage would be minimal.
I have been all over the world and driven on roads in many countries.
Roads that are subjected to far harsher conditions than those in Australia.

Ice freezing the roads heat so hot it melts the roads.
Overloaded trucks one after another are commonplace.

But the roads aremade better and stand up to the conditions better than the goat tracks we have here.

In most countries the blacktop is several inches thick and the concrete thick too
But in Australia, we paint out roads with pathetically thin blacktop which breaks down at the first rain.

There is a stretch of road from Wyong to Gosford which was recently remade  (nearly 10 years of roadworks and the horrors involved)
Before it was opened the blacktop was breaking up.
Almost a week after it was opened it fell apart damaging several cars in the process.
All the roads in the suburbs around the coast are dirt with a microscopically thin layer of black paint, which , at the first rain opens up into bigger and bigger potholes that damage suspensions, tyres and wheels.
These are patched with sugar as within an hour the hole is back.

We rarely see any new roads, and they take many many years to build.

China has built millions of kilometres of roads in the last few years, but this is beyond our abilities.

Yet we pay big for registration, petrol tax, and every other vehicular related tax (cash grab) little of which finds its way back to the system generating it.

Too many crooks, too many greedy public serve us.

ranmar850:

--- Quote ---Understood ranmar, but my Falcon ute at 2840 GVM does no more damage to the road than any other family sized sedan/4WD etc.

Yes I do 50,000km p.a. but that just means I pay more fuel excise than the average Joe as well
--- End quote ---

I accept your point there, and the light vehicle caught up in the commercial vehicle registration costs is probably the best example of "unfairness" . And the extra costs associated with using a Falcon ute for work  in your example are certainly onerous.

Registration fees have historically been based on engine capacity. This goes way back--it used to be expressed as Horsepower, which was actually capacity, and not power generated. And there were often sharp grades as you rose through the categories..

I know--we all know  :laughing7:--that Valkie likes to rant about the "grubberment" , it's just his thing, likes to be the cranky old bugger with time on his hands, if his posts are anything to go on. Amiright?  :dontknow:  he also should have known that he was up for a higher rego fee when he bough the Mux, but did anyway, and now has to grumble. And he also chooses to live in the Central Coast, which, once upon a time, was a quiet, relaxed place to live, and is just now  "Sydney over the Hawkesbury" . This is probably why he is grumpy?  :sad10: And , guess what, government has lot s and lots of services to provide, people want more all the time, and the money has to come from somewhere. And I do find it a little ironic that someone would hold up China as some kind of shining example on road building when they would likely be slagging them off for everything else in the next breath.

But much of your increased costs for "rego" over the last few decades is actually the increased cost of the compulsory third party insurance. Over east, this skyrocketed when your governments privatised the process. This is the biggest contributor to your total cost, by far. The government  over here kept control of the process, and our rego fees appear to be far lower than yours.

We also have no mandatory annual inspections for private vehicles. if you maintain your rego without lapse, the only time it will see the pits is if you get " yellow stickered".  Passenger-carrying vehicles, even Ubers, have a six-monthly inspection. There is no special licencing required if you are using a light vehicle for work, it goes purely on the GVM. Over 4.5 tonne, you need a truck licence. Commercial or not. Rego fees do vary between commercial and private use, not massively. It's up to you to tick the appropriate box when renewing.

WAI4WD:
I like the Victorian fee structure. Doesn't matter what size engine or other nonsense, just whether you're metro, outer metro or rural.

https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/registration/registration-fees/vehicle-registration-fees

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page