Electric vehicle (EV) owners already pay no excise or road user charges.

Owners pay the luxury car tax when buying the car.

But the EV industry wants that abolished, too. EVs are simply a rich person's status symbol.

We all pay excise duty when buying fuel. EVs dodge the taxes that the rest of us pay.

Victoria is proposing a new 2.5c/km "road user charge" for EVs. Sensible, but not enough.

How much do you pay? Let's just say that you are buying the cheapest petrol in Wagga at 125.9c a litre.

You have paid GST (11.45c) and excise of 42.7c per litre (petrol or diesel), so the actual fuel cost was 71.75c before the government taxes were levied.

If your car uses 10 litres/100km, your excise tax is 4.27c for every kilometre you travel.

So you are paying the road user charge of 4.27c, while an EV owner pays nothing.

Even under the Victorian proposal, they will pay half as much as you.

While fuel excise is a primary road user charge, much of your road tax goes into general revenue. It is just a tax. So EV owners, in reality, are rich tax avoiders.

If electric cars are the answer, why are there no electric freight trains in NSW?

Why is Queensland removing electric overhead wires, as is happening at the Emerald railway junction?

Look closely at this picture - overhead wires gone.

An Aurizon (privatised QR freight) worker at Emerald told me that electric trains haven't run to Emerald for years.

A quick call to Queensland Rail confirmed his comment.

This quote from Wikipedia perhaps sums up the economics of electric haulage in Queensland: "The advances in diesel locomotive development in the 1990s changed the cost-benefit aspects of electrification".

Further on the story adds, "although new locomotives have since been put into service on the electrified coal systems ... all freight trains to Brisbane are currently diesel hauled."

Queensland has more than 2000km of electrified railway lines, more than any other state.

Back in the Bjelke-Petersen era, electrification of the state's rural rail network was proceeding quickly due to steep increases in diesel prices.

Savings of 120 million litres of diesel were anticipated by 1990.

Queensland was late to electrify even its Brisbane suburban lines.

The first suburban electric ran in 1979. Country electrification reached north to Rockhampton, then was extended west to Emerald in 1987.

Central Queensland is a major coal mining area, with coal-fired power stations that should support the electrified railways.

Near Rockhampton, we saw coal trains kilometres long with two electric engines at the front and one in the middle.

But we also saw a diesel-hauled freight train under the wires.

Is electric power the answer? If so, Mr Constance should be insisting that where NSW railways have overhead wires, we should be running electric freight engines.

If electricity is not efficient for trains, why are we encouraging electric vehicles?

Labor will exempt EVs from import, fringe benefit and other taxes to increase electric vehicle uptake.

Great for inner-city stop-start travel - of no use to high-kilometre country people.

EVs were just 0.4 per cent of Australian new car sales in March 2021, a total of 411 vehicles.

Most would have been sold to money-wasting government departments and virtue-signalling councils.

In the US, only two per cent were EVs despite a $10,000 subsidy.

By the way, the Toyota Hilux is Australia's largest-selling vehicle.

Country buyers and tradies can't use a Tesla!

One day, electric cars may well be our everyday transport, but right now they are for the rich.

But won't EVs save the planet?

Let us not forget that electric cars and railway engines run mostly on coal-generated electric power.

Trains can't wait for the sun to shine.

The day of the electric car may arrive, but it is not today, or even in the near future.

Meanwhile, the non-polluting hydrogen car may well overtake the electric car for efficiency and environmental advantage.