A national road-user charge for electric car drivers is on the horizon after the government signalled it was working on plans that could see all EV motorists contribute to road maintenance.
But could EV drivers be forced to pay their “fair share” earlier than we expected?
There are now reports the government is fast-tracking the fee this week as part of broader tax reform and productivity targets.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers flagged establishing road user taxes for EV drivers during the federal election this past May, but no concrete policy had been announced.
Petrol and diesel car drivers already pay this fee in Australia through the fuel excise tax.
The treasurer indicated he would push the EV charge during Labor’s second term.
Chalmers is now reportedly putting his foot on the pedal as an economic summit in Sydney with industry members and public servants takes place today.
The idea is believed to to be a key topic during the high-level talks.
Chalmers will not be personally attending this meeing, 9news.com.au understands.
Labor frontbencher Murray Watt downplayed the dicussions and said the EV charge has been “no secret”.
“I wouldn’t want to jump ahead of any sort of decision-making with that,” Watt told ABC News Breakfast today.
“It’s no secret that we’ve said previously we’ll work with the states and territories on this matter.
“There’s obviously some reporting about that today in some of the newspapers.”
Watt said it was too “premature” to say when the charge would be enforced.
Chalmers initially referred advice for a road user charge to the national cabinet in 2023 as a replacement for fuel excise revenue, however the process hit a brick wall.
The proposed national EV charge re-entered the political sphere during the federal election.
The Coalition joined the conversation during the election race too and said it would find different ways to make EV drivers pay to use Australian roads.
The treasurer said last month he wanted to be “upfront” with Australians about the federal government’s plans.
“I had a discussion with the Transurban board the other day about this. I’ve had discussions with Catherine King and Chris Bowen about this over time,” Chalmers told media in Canberra.
“This is not a new development, and our interest in seeing what can be done over the medium and long term is not a revelation either. We flagged that for some time.”
How do road user charges work?
There are federal and state complexities associated with a new road fee targeting EV drivers.
The NSW government has already flagged plans to apply a road-user charge to EV drivers by July 1, 2027 or whenever EVs make up 30 per cent of all new car sales, whichever comes first.
This charge will be indexed to the consumer price index for each financial year, meaning for the 2025-26 financial year the charge would be 2.874c per kilometre for battery EV and hydrogen fuel cell EVs or 2.379c for a plug-in hybrid EVs.
NSW is the only state government with confirmed plans to introduce the charge.
NSW and Victoria have both demanded a revenue-sharing model if a national road-user distance-based charge on EVs was implemented.
The Victorian government confirmed it would work with Chalmers and the federal government for a national charge.
The NSW government said it was working to “assess the potential implications of the decision for NSW’s electric vehicle road user charge”.
