alasta: Yes. Believe it or not roads are expensive to build.

Dingbatt:

alasta: Yes. Believe it or not roads are expensive to build.

You don't think the excise from petrol has been spent only on roads for all these years do you? You've got to pay for the country to run somehow, so it's that or jack GST or personal and company tax even higher. At least the people who use the roads pay for them as well.
But wait there's more....... you will see in the not-to-distant future increasing numbers of toll roads. Supposedly to pay for the newly constructed roads that you thought your petrol taxes were paying for.

xpd: I miss the days of 90c p/l of petrol :)

qwerty7: I know roads are expensive to build.

I also believe many tax dollars could be saved if government agencies were more efficient. 

I think many people wouldn't know 50% of the fuel price is tax. Then again i could be wrong. 

sbiddle:
Fuel companies and the AA have been trying to point this out every opportunity they've had, especially since our taxes on fuel are very low by OECD standards.

DrCheese:

sbiddle:
Fuel companies and the AA have been trying to point this out every opportunity they've had, especially since our taxes on fuel are very low by OECD standards.

Most places I've been charge about $3 per litre. Exceptions are the US, Canada, and Australia.

sbiddle: In simple $ terms petrol isn't expensive compared to many other countries which is something many people tend to overlook. What is an issue however is the price compared to our average incomes and buying power.

nickb800:

Dingbatt:

alasta: Yes. Believe it or not roads are expensive to build.

You don't think the excise from petrol has been spent only on roads for all these years do you? You've got to pay for the country to run somehow, so it's that or jack GST or personal and company tax even higher. At least the people who use the roads pay for them as well.
But wait there's more....... you will see in the not-to-distant future increasing numbers of toll roads. Supposedly to pay for the newly constructed roads that you thought your petrol taxes were paying for.

I think you will find that the excise revenue from petrol is ring fenced for land transport. So you can be fairly certain that most of it iS being spent purely on roads, in some form (although some of it does go towards public transport, walking, cycling, im sure these are small compared with).

Of course the ringfencing of this may have freed up other government revenue from general taxation away from roads to other government expenditure, but that is an indirect effect.