Them Truckies (Labour fumbles again)

Annette King really dropped the ball this time.

Without warning the Road User Charges (RUCs) paid by all owners of diesel fueled road vehicles were put up, by 7%

For a small diesel car, it will cost $32.80 more for 10,000 km. A larger vehicle, such as a three tonne SUV, will cost an extra $49.20 per 10,000km. A typical five tonne truck will pay an additional $53.80 per 10,000 kilometres, while a 23 tonne four-axle truck can expect to pay an additional $198.

This is the first increase since 1989 so on the face of it, not too bad an ouch but add that to the ever rising cost of diesel and that the truckies thought they had an agreement that there would be some advanced warning... didn't the highways and motorways look interesting as trucks from all over pretty much blocked off the CBD by moving at 20-30km/h.

Every CBD that is, not just Auckland and Wellington.

For just 2 days organising the truckies produced this amazing spectacle with only 2 traffic tickets (for a pair of truckies who totally blocked SH2 by parking their trucks) to show for it. Well Done!

Of course it wouldn't have happened if Annette King and Co thought to increase the RUC by just 1 cent per kilometre annually over the last 5 years or over the next 5 years for that matter just like the government has done for petrol tax since the time of Rob Muldoon.

Or given the promised one month warning for that matter.

Of course last time they gave only 1½ days warning and lost $17 million worth of tax due to rushed prepurchasing of RUCs.

All that wasted diesel was last Friday's news. The price of diesel and petrol has gone up again since then.

At $1.919 per litre my earlier prediction of $2 per litre by Christmas looks a bit too optimistic now.

So will it rise to that price before the end of the month or by September?