An expert says he has concerns about privacy and data collection as the Government plans to expand the use of road user charges.
Yesterday, the Government signed off on the first steps towards scrapping petrol tax and shifting all vehicles onto electronic road user charges (RUC).
Currently New Zealanders help pay for the roads via their vehicle licence (or “rego”) fee, road user charges (RUC) and the petrol excise duty (PED).
Minister of Transport Chris Bishop said the transition would ensure all vehicles pay based on actual road use (including weight) regardless of fuel type, and said eventually paying RUC would be similar to paying a monthly electricity bill.
Speaking to Breakfast, AA principal policy adviser Terry Collins said generally the move was “a good idea, but has some challenges”, particularly around privacy and data collection.
“If they’re going to electronically monitor every vehicle, it’s the privacy issues around it,” he said.
“Who wants to know where you are and when? And that unlocks that whole issue around everything to do with phones, and the data. Who has it, and what do they want to do with it?”
He said there were some “really good” aspects to the proposed legislative changes, including distance-based Warrant of Fitness.
However, Collins also raised concerns about the cost of putting a transponder in each car and the practicalities of monitoring each car.
“I think generally they don’t want to have day-to-day monitoring (which) would be very expensive and it will be invasive. So it’s how you download that information about your travel on a semi-regular basis, maybe monthly, where they can record it and send you the report.”
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including privacy concerns over road user charges, possible changes to Wellington’s waterfront, and one of the biggest sports memorabilia heists ever. (Source: 1News)
He said there were some “real challenges ahead” to understand how to collect the data safely.
“Fuel excise duty was the cheapest to collect and hardest to evade, this one’s going to be hardest to collect and the easiest to evade, so there’s some real challenges ahead.”
Transport Minister responds
Chris Bishop told Breakfast that the Government would engage with the Privacy Commissioner to ensure data was collected safely.
Chris Bishop said paying for RUC would be similar to paying an electricity bill at the end of each month. (Source: Breakfast)
“Ultimately, the standards will be set by the Government, and there will be potentially a range of competing providers. And I get the concerns around privacy,” he said.
He said other places, such as Sydney, already used transponder technology in their cars to monitor where they were going and what they were doing.
“When you go through a toll gantry it gives a little beep, and it charges you to your credit card and you pay at the end of the month, or week, or whatever.”
“In other countries jurisdictions they’ve had those for over a decade, so we’re actually miles behind the rest of the world.
“And some of these concerns around privacy, and tracking, things like that, we are really conscious about that and we are going to work our way through that to protect against all of that kind of stuff.”
Labour’s Peeni Henare said there were still questions Kiwis would want answered before the rollout of the new system, expected in 2027.
