9 September 2012

Cheaper licences for clean driving records as "election policy" veers into fantasy

| johnboy
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Following yesterday’s “doing very little but looking like I care” policy announcement on obesity Chief Minister Gallagher is promising to do very little to encourage safe driving:

That’s why if re-elected in 2012, ACT Labor will encourage and reward good drivers by providing a 20% discount on fees for licence renewals and for P-Platers with clean driving records.

It’s hard to see it making any difference at all. But it will cost $5 million over four years that will have to be found someplace else to pay for all the other things (like pretending to be doing something about obesity).

I mean if the Greens can just announce their hopes and dreams as policy why not everyone else?

And if we’re just wishin’ and hopin’ is this the limit of our hopes and dreams? Where are the gold nuggets falling from the sky and the emo lawn that cuts itself?

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It will probably cost them more to set up than the discount is worth. And for those with an unblemished record who have just renewed their license, it will be two more Government’s before they see the benefit of the discount….

Agree that a discount on CTP and rego would be better but stiffer penalties to pay for more police presence and better infrastructure would be best (and I don’t care whether they use speed, red light or P2Ps to raise the extra revenue).

It will be fun reading some of the regular contributors to RA (who are obviously regular offenders) whinging about how they won’t get their discount…….

So with a 5 year license the avg driver will save $17? Whoopdi doo..

Pffft – when they actually start enforcing the road rules sensibly then something like this might be worth doing.

We’ll save maybe 20 bucks every 5 years. Yawn.

I’m just waiting for someone to announce that if they are elected to government no child will be living in poverty by 20xx – and looking at some of the offers on the table, I reckon it’ll be on the cards!

This policy means nothing to pensioners who do not pay rego but have to pay the highest CTP fees in Australia due to the NRMA monopoly. If Labor announced subsidised third party for pensioners – say a rebate of 10% or something – that would be innovative. It is a classic case of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

johnboy said :

rego would be real money.

this is gesture politics.

Amen to that. Let’s see that discount applied to the huge CTP we pay on rego every year. If you’re really a good driver, then you shouldn’t need to use it anyway, so why not give us a discount we can actually benefit from.

On the other hand, I would suggest neither what I suggest nor what has been announced will really do anything to promote safe driving. Hand up everyone who has been caught but had nothing recorded, or has done something stupid and not being caught.

The basic problem if this was anything more than a warm fuzzy is that in Canberra you need a registered car to be a functioning member of society.

I speak as someone who lived without a car for 18 months recently.

I still cycle to work every day. But I need the car there for other things and that’s before you try and raise children.

If paying to drive is not an option but a necessity 20% off something I renew every ten years isn’t going to have much impact on my driving habits today.

Even on rego I’d keep on driving carefully because I don’t want to get in an accident and at the speed limit because I don’t want to get a ticket.

But Katy gets to say she’s doing something about it. And that’s all that really matters.

A bit like housing affordability!

Licence renewals? Meh. Now rego, on the other hand, you’d have my interest…

rego would be real money.

this is gesture politics.

Not even innovative. And stingy. The NSW Liberals introduced it in July this year as their Fair go for safe drivers scheme, promising a 50% discount for fees.

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