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Electric vehicle users currently don’t pay fuel excise. An alternative that has been floated is a road user charge; King said her department has been investigating what a road user charge might look like but said the government is keen not to disincentivise the uptake of electric vehicles.

She said:

We’ve been working within my department on the model for what a road user charge might look like. That’s no surprise to anyone. That was in the financial midyear outlook. Since December, my department has been working on that.

Obviously at the moment, we’re trying to encourage as much electric vehicle uptake as we can. We don’t want to disincentivise this. So there’s a balance to be struck with the benefit, tax potential of road user charging. But we’re making our way through that.

Whilst we talk about the need for electrification as part of the energy security, it’s also part of our economic security. I do find it passing strange, Matt Canavan, trying to take us back to the 1990s or 1980s, not understanding that the world has moved on. The world has moved on in terms of energy security.

Where there are hard to abate sectors like aviation and like some of the heavy haulage which would take a little bit longer to electrify, low carbon liquid fuels. The fact that we basically grow canola here and ship it overseas and turn it into sustainable aviation fuel and then boy it back is nuts, in our view. We should actually be having that low carbon liquid, renewable diesel. We should be able to generate that here.

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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2026/apr/12/petrol-prices-save-fuel-government-ad-campaign-anthony-albanese-singapore-labor-coalition-ntwnfb

Author : Stephanie Convery

Publish date : 2026-04-11 23:34:00

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