Julie Anne Genter will have her fingers crossed that fuel prices keep ballooning, otherwise her car tax won’t provide all the economic benefits she claims it will, National’s Associate Transport spokesperson Brett Hudson says.

“The Associate Transport Minister has been shopping her car tax policy to the public based on misinformation about the future price of petrol.

“The purported benefits of her plan to tax higher-emissions vehicles and subsidise low-emissions vehicles are almost entirely derived from future fuel savings for private vehicle owners, according to her ministry’s documents.

“But those calculations are based on the pre-tax price of fuel being 40c to 50c per litre more than it is now. The problem with that is, it’s never going to happen.

“Her ministry stuffed up and based its policy on an out-of-date MBIE forecast from 2012. The fuel prices in that forecast are already 50 per cent higher than actual prices today.

“This completely undermines the policy model. Without these fuel savings benefits, the car tax has a benefit-to-cost ratio of just 0.2, meaning for every dollar spent the policy only benefits greenhouse gas emissions by 20c.

“Not only does Labour and the Greens want to punish Kiwis for buying certain cars, their sneaky tax grab will not deliver anything like the benefits they claim.

“I’m calling on Julie Anne Genter to either admit her policy is based on incorrect information, or that she secretly hopes Kiwis get fleeced at the pump so her lies won’t be exposed.”

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