Truckies Protest
Trucks Protesting at MacKays Crossing gathering point 6.30am 4 July 2008
(LtoR) Truckies Chris Arcus – Levin, Nathan Guy MP, CliveTaylor – Paraparaumu and David Arcus – Horowhenua based.
When I stood at 6.30am at Kapiti’s MacKays Crossing with the 60-odd trucks assembled for the road user charge protest rally into Wellington recently – it took me back to the fart tax protest rally. That protest a few years ago, against Labour’s climate change proposal drew support from nearly every person on the street. I remember driving into Wellington and receiving heaps of toots of support. This truckie protest was very similar - the beeps from passing Kapiti motorists confirmed that this protest wasn’t just about road user charges for trucks it was everyone saying enough is enough. To muster 4500 trucks across New Zealand demonstrates the level of anger towards this Government.
The timing couldn’t have been worse for the Labour government who are showing they are really out of touch. In the last few weeks they have delivered a trifecta of bad news for motorists. First, on July 1, they raised ACC levies at the petrol pump by 2 cents a litre or $120 million, bringing ACC’s take at the pump to about 10c/l. Then they decided to hit the trucking industry with an increase in road user charges by 7% on average which will be just passed onto the consumer. What got the truckies fired up was one month’s warning was meant to be given prior to the increase kicking in – thus the Government reneged on its deal. On the day of the protest, the Government held out an olive branch by telling truckies they would set up a working party to review road user charges – once again out of touch and too little too late!
The third and final blow was the regional fuel tax legislation that was passed to enable regional councils to strike a levy of up to 10 cents a litre on petrol to be collected for regional transport projects. Sure we need to get on and build Transmission Gully and electrify passenger rail closer to Levin – but the appetite for this tax now is close to zero. When I spoke in Parliament about this bill, which National opposed, I mentioned that we may need a mechanism like this in the future, just not now. Everyone I speak to is struggling with high mortgage rates, and soaring food and fuel prices. Labour has over taxed workers and wasted much of their hard earned cash.
It would be different if motorists and truckies could see improvements on our highway south of Levin to Kapiti and through to Wellington. That is the bottle neck of our region and it will take Resource Management Act reform and thinking outside the square to fund some of our vitally needed capital transport projects. Just adding more taxes to a thinning wallet shows that Labour are still caught in the same old ideology – the Government knows best and they want to decide how to spend and waste your hard earned cash.