You betAs new tax breaks for small business push sales of cars, buses, trucks and utes toward an all-time high the Australian Treasury has begun thinking out loud about more-widespread congestion charges including the use of number plates and GPS devices as an alternative to tags.
In a paper released this morning which the Treasury stresses does not represent its official view, economist Paul Hubbard commends Sydney's experiment with time-of-day pricing levels for the Harbour Bridge and Tunnel and says it could go further.
Noting that Sydney's E-Toll system is only one of a number of possible methods of charing for road use it points to an automatic number plate recognition system used in London in which a network of 340 high definition cameras read number plates and generate bills for weekday travel within the city between 7.00 am and 6.00 pm.
It says even better is a global position satellite system being trialled in Seattle in which GPS tolling devices are placed within cars, monitoring driving behaviour and deducting money from accounts in real time...
In the trial drivers are given a "travel budget" and information on tolls as they approach crowded roads.
Motorists who changed their behaviour to avoid travelling at congested times "were able to cash-out their initial entitlement, and thereby receive a benefit from their private contribution to reducing congestion".
The paper says GPS devices would allow the monitoring on congestion "across the entire road network, potentially alleviating the problems of vehicles shifting to unpriced roads to evade tolls."
It says the avoidable social costs of congestion on Australian roads are set to soar from $9 billion in 2005 to more than $20 billion by 2020 and commends the Seattle GPS technology as "mature and reliable".
New vehicle sales defied the economic gloom to climb above 100,000 in June for only the forth time in history, spurred by a generous tax deduction of 50 per cent offered to small businesses in the May Budget.
"The surge is directly attributable to the tax break," said Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries chief executive Andrew McKellar.
"Business purchases are up 12 per cent on a year ago, business purchases of utes, vans and light trucks are up 27 per cent. As a result of the Budget we've probably sold an extra 10,000 vehicles over 3 months."
Toyota cemented its position as Australia's most popular brand, accounting for 21,400 of the 102,846 vehicles sold, about as much as Holden and Ford combined.
The 50 per cent tax break is due to expire in December, raising the possibility that the boost in sales will be short-lived. Asked yesterday what would happen beyond December, Small Business Minister Craig Emerson said he did not "have a crystal ball".
In further encouraging news the Australian Industry Group/Commonwealth Bank Performance of Services Index moved from negative to positive territory in June on the back of a return to growth in sales and orders.
Commonwealth Bank economist John Peters said the result was consistent with other news "suggesting the economy well sidestep a severe recession in 2009 despite the negative headwinds from the global econoic meltdown".
Published in today's SMH
8 comments:
Brilliant plan unfolding, not.
1. artificially boost migration so that population increases by 400000/year
2. continue with designer car cites with failed public transport infrastructure
3. forced use of cars to get to/from work for most workers
4. pretend the congestion is a natural organic growth of society rather than a planned ‘Go for Growth’ strategy nutted out by Liberals and Liberals-lite
Have any of the Einsteins in govt looked at the growth rates of countries like Germany, Sweden or Norway? How is it possible that a viable economy can exist without recourse to increasing the number of consumers to prop up ‘sales’ of imported junk?
Current Account Balances for countries that produce more than they consume:
China, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Switzerland, Norway, Netherlands, Kuwait or Singapore.
Here is a list of countries that consume more than they produce:
Portugal, Romania, France, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Australia, UK, Spain and the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_current_account_balance
The US has the largest CAB of -$731B. Aus has x 15 times the population of US and therefore in comparative terms Aus has a larger effective CAB equivalent to -$845B. And still the govt thinks this artificial growth for the sake of increased GDP, now confused with Gross Domestic Consumption, is a good thing.
Would not a more intelligent plan to avoid social costs of congestion on Australian roads involve cutting immigration growth back? Or is it racist to consider costs in an economy these days?
I say keep the immigration levels. What we need is a deportation policy to improve the population stock. The migrants coming from non-anglo countries make this country of lucky fools bareble. There is more to life than footy, HSV utes and half-assed work and she'll be right mate. It's not the recent migrants that rooted this "lucky country".
Tend to agree. Where are all the large communities from Central America, Latin America, Mongolia, Tibet, Russia and Africa? All we seem to have is Anglo, Euro, Chinese and Indian.
My preference would be for migrants who still had more of the spiritual life in tact - societies not so much sullied by souless Western consumerism. What we need are people still in tune with real intelligence. Tibetans would be at the top of the list.
Peter, is there some way you can remove the 'anonymous' choice? Why posters go to so much effort only to fail at a simple thing like choosing a distinguishing psuedonym is beyond me.
I agree with the first poster who has specifically addressed the problems of population growth and the role of high rates of immigration in that.
I can understand why he felt the need for the last comment but it brought a racist flavour to the thread, taken up by the next two posters, which is totally unnecessary and is often used by the growth lobby to discredit opposing views.
The main point of my original post is that govt uses increasing population to increase GDP which is really GDConsumption. Our population rate increase is about 2.2%. Norway in comparison is about 0.3%. In order to keep up with the infrastructure to service rapid pop growth all States have gone heavily into debt (eg Qld -$75B). We seem to have put the cart before the horse believing that ramping population was a solution to economic 'activity' and the funding of pensions long term – but policy makers conveniently overlook infrastructure costs to facilitate this.
Unfortunately, debate or mere mention of immigration rates seems to be taboo. This is not a sign of a mature society. I ask no immigrant to leave, but question the sanity of our current growth rate in terms of stress on economy. SG you are right, I should not have included the final comment, I was feeling pre-emptive of the kind of comments that ususally without fail appear. My error to have guaranteed such comments.
I was the 2nd Anon, and I actually agree Australia doesn't have a sensible population policy. It would be great if we could have a discussion about sustainable population without race becoming an issue. Thanks to 10 years of Howard using race as a wedge I don't think that is possible.
I also find I don't need to dig very deep to find that a lot of the people who are complaining vocally about immigration are racist, perhaps without meaning to be. That is because the non-racist people who are concerned about population have been wedged into silence.
I also happen to believe that immigration, especially from diverse communities brings a net benefit to Australia. So it would be great if we could have a sustainable population that was also diverse. Any ideas? Get ride of the baby bonus? Cut the intake from the UK?
Definitely get rid of the baby bonus, use the money for a sterilization bonus. Cut parenting payments for all new children after 2 per couple.
Look to have a stable population first to show the growth fetishists that the world will not end with a steady state economy. Look to an ethical immigration policy of mainly refugees and no poaching of talent from countries who can't aford to lose it.
Increase foriegn aid to the poorest who are most at risk from overpopulation.
Reduce our population as well as our individual ecological footprints.
The topic of population control is a mindfield. Historian Professor Matthew Connelly of Columbia University gave a very interesting lecture on what can go wrong with population control efforts - http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2008/2365806.htm and he is a supporter of birth control.
The place to start in my opinion is with reducing the Australian populations carbon footprint, if for no other reason than not to be left behind in finding exportable solutions to GW instead of living off coal exports.
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