March 12, 2026 • 14 mins
If you’re old enough, then you’ll remember there was a time when every Kiwi household had to pick a weekday where they wouldn’t drive.
Carless Days were introduced in 1979 as an attempt to reduce petrol consumption amid a global oil shock thanks to the Iranian Revolution.
The scheme was short lived – it was scrapped in 1980, after it achieved only a minimal reduction in petrol use.
So, why are we hearing about it again now if it failed so miserably? And, are there alternatives we should be looking at closer?
Today on The Front Page, transport commentator and Greater Auckland director Matt Lowrie is with us to break down the idea, and maybe what others there are as petrol prices continue to rise.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Editor/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Jane Yee
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kielda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. If you're
old enough then you'll remember there was a time when
every key we household had to pick a week day
where they wouldn't drive. Carlos Days were introduced in nineteen
(00:28):
seventy nine as an attempt to reduce petrol consumption amid
a global oil shock thanks to the Iranian Revolution. The
scheme was short lived. It was scrapped in nineteen eighty
after it achieved only a minimal reduction in petrol use.
So why are we hearing about it again now if
(00:50):
it failed so miserably and are there alternatives that we
should be looking at closer Today? On the Front Page,
transport commentator and Greater Auckland director Matt Lowry is with
us to break down the idea and maybe what others
there are as petrol prices continue to rise. First off, Matt,
(01:13):
tell me what you know about carless days.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah, the idea of kind of stays comes from the
late seventies, when the last time there was an issue
you have more in a round and it relates to
earlier that you have a pass or when you can
drive your car and you can only drive your car
on certain days of the week, so you know, you
might only better travel on a Monday and a Wednesday
and a Friday instead of Tuesday and Thursday.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
And the idea is to encourage a reduction and oil use.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
And so did it work.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Not really a significant number of people that would get
exemptions for it. And that was back in a time
when most households in New Zealand still only had one car.
That's quite different now and many households have two or
even more cars in them, and so if could quite
be a scenario where you know, even with a carle
(02:04):
Stays implemented that people have different days and they're still
able to travel around and use those additional cars to
continue traveling is normally I think the goal, the goal overall.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Is to reduce usage, but we need to so.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
We need to think about other ways that we can
we can reduce pigal use so that or fuel use
so that we can make what with what stops we've
got lasts longer.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, and I mean whenever the government tries to implementment
something like this, there are always people looking for those loopholes, right,
Like you mentioned, those two car households probably got away
with a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
But I suppose in terms of if we would implement
it now the I understand that there was a bit
of forgery going on, so you had a ticket in
your car or something saying yeah, I can drive this
car every day except Wednesday, for example.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
But nowadays, with technology.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
It would be that portion at least would be a
bit easier to try.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Okay, well you think.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So, but that we require significant enforcement, and yeah, there's
there's plenty of other things that we need police or
other agencies doing that is not enforcing when you when
and where you can drive, you know, without rolling out
significant technology to automate that.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And again that significant COSSM would take a long time.
It wouldn't. That's not a short term solution.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So it doesn't sound to me like something that is
going to be a quick win for reducing fuel use.
And yeah, maybe if we were thinking longer about it,
we might be able to do something, but I don't
think it's certainly nothing that's going to be in place
for in the next few months or weeks or months.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Right, So when the government says they're looking into it,
they're like, well, yeah, we're looking into it, but it's
probably not going to happen. Hey, what else do you
reckon they should be looking into right now?
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, I think there are a couple of other things
that would be practical for a short term solution, you know,
and we saw with COVID that if there's a sort
of rallying together and we can work together type scenario,
people will accept it. But things that could reduce for
your use might be things like reducing speed limits on
our state highways, you know, reducing it from one hundred
down to eighty klometers and now we'll make travel to
(04:10):
take a little bit longer, not too much, but that
does reduce fuel use. Particularly after eighty kilometers, vehicles start
to be more air resistance and burning more fuel to
travel the same distance. So that could be a way
to reduce take a few percent twints off the level
of fuel use, and that might help extend extend things
(04:31):
we do need to be encouraging more walking and cycling,
more public transport in our studies where that's possible. Those
are the things that you know, we can encourage people
to change how they travel. We should be looking at
for businesses that can encouraging more work from home. Again,
you know a lot of businesses that have shift that
started to shift back to mortar being in the office
(04:53):
a lot more still not necessarily what it was proprior
to COVID, but the technology exists that the a lot
of people are still doing it quite significantly and I
am today you know we're working from home. Maybe maybe
an extra day working from home median might be a
way to reduce fuel use for people traveling and if
you're not public transport, walking and slight things are great options.
(05:15):
You know, we could support that with more things like
pop up bike lands in some places, many of our
cities Auckland will into approaches have been expanding there. There
there's slightly networks and we could we could encourage that
further other things also is a lot of there's a
lot of freight that could potentially.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Move to the round network that we could encourage. That
might require more funding for key.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Are hole to get more staff and pay more staff
throughout those times to operate those trains and process all that.
But that could be an option for getting more for
it because rail threat is more efficient in terms of
your use than trucking things around the country. That's not
practical everywhere, but you know, those are sorts of things
that we could we could do.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
And I guess the other thing is how can we
encourage rapidly more electric vehicles. There's to be a bit hard.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
The world's going to be crying out for those as
much as possible at the moment, so it's gonna be
hard to get stocked in, I guess. But more electric vehicles,
whether it be cars, electric bytes, you know, those literal trucks,
all those sort of things, to get ol vehicle fully
off fossil fuels, because there is really what's going to
be you know, that's what's going to hold the economy
to ransom as these fuel prices.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, and there are definitely some kind of short term
fixes I suppose, like you said, and then those longer
term like getting everyone over to evs. Petrels now topping
what three dollars a leter that's over twice the real
nineteen seventy nine peak adjusted for inflation, when they introduce
the carless days. In terms of getting people onto public transports,
(06:52):
say if the government tomorrow was like right to encourage
people to get onto.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
The bus to go to work as opposed to driving
and using fuel. We're going to make public transport costs free.
Do you reckon our network can even hold that many
consumers at once.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Well, we're currently in the busiest time of the year
with March madness, where most of the public transport networks
are used the most. We're still seeing overall public transport
use less than it was prior to COVID. So those
networks have grown since then and have become better.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
And so.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
There is a lot of capacity within the network to
carry more, and there is more that could be done.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
For example, we could extend it would.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Require were again more funding to operate those buses and
trains and all the rest of it, but we could
extend the length of the peak hours peak time so
that people might have to travel slightly later or slightly earlier,
slightly later, but like people do for a cry and
avoid congestion. There's a lot of capacity, particularly in the
off peak, and we could also extend those peak hours
(07:52):
into that a lot more.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
So there is significant capacity there.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
As sure, it's not going to be able to take everyone,
and it's not going to be the only solution that's available,
but it could certainly we could certainly do a lot
more with the public transport capacity we've got. Typically after
Easter public transport use and v or used here to
drop off a little bit, So that will help easy
bit of pressure that we can if we can continue
(08:17):
sort of the March levels of public transport youth throughout
later into the year, that we're taken against.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
The pressure off off the roads and off fuel use.
The only day my daughter doesn't go to kindergarten, sweetly
success post. If we don't have the car, if we
don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Whose car on Tuesday, how will you get to work with?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Oh, well, my husband can catch the bus.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
The human way to select the car stard is to
select the day that causes one the least inconvenience. Surely,
if they choose the day on which they use the
car least, then carless days must be the least effective.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
We're of reducing federal consumption.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Along with Carl stays, I suppose as a big headline
the government's looking into it, but it probably won't won't
go ahead, but it is one of those eye catching
kind of things that we all go, oh, what if
this happened in terms of rationing petrol in the past,
How has that happened.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah, the idea is that you might you might have
a certain budget that you're able to use of fuel,
so everyone has a has where account effectively of you're
allowed that this mere leaders of fuel and you could
obviously trade that or use it or buy it more
from other people. That would work in some situations. Again,
(09:37):
as how you'd set that scheme ut protecting rapidly to
be able to implement that, and how you would monitor
it and put that monitoring and enforcement in place, and
that is always going to be the challenges.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Anything that's going to require significant.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Change like that that's apart from what we used to
is going to take some time to set up and establish,
which is why some of those other options like the
public transfer walking asidely, like you know, just encouraging work
from home are things that we can do now and
we can we can get some success from because.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
You know, we could we could be starting that right
now and help reduce our.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Fuel usage for the next month or two before.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Things get worse.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, and those are all things that I guess doesn't
mean that there will be like a wild West. I
can I can imagine a scenario where we do ration
petrol or something, and there's like guys on street corners
with little you know, jerry cans full of full of
petrol selling them for double or something.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
So the goal of is to try and use more
of the things that we know we can do rather
than trying to something new, I think, because that's where
we're going to have trouble when we have when we're
trying to implement something new, anything we're trying to say
you have to try and restrict or you're very restrictive,
people will try and find ways around. We better define
solutions that people can actually vibely take. And yeah, those
(10:56):
are the things. Some of those we have now I
guess we need more of them. And but those are
the things that work.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
What about do you reckon if the government was given
the opportunity to open up the CRL a bit earlier,
for example, would that help it?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
What in sense that it provides more incentive to youth
public transport, so you know there is it provides new
two use stations in the city center. It makes it
easier to travel and particularly from the Western line, so
that would encourage more people to use the train. So
if we could open that up earlier, that would be fantastic.
There are other pecks, There are other considerations that are
(11:31):
affecting that, like testing and making sure those are all
working and that the neboos operating properly, and how that
directs with the freight trains and what have you. So
if we can get that open sooner, the sooner we can.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Do that, they're better really from my point of view.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
When it comes to longer term fixes. You mentioned electric vehicles.
They currently make up about what fifteen percent of new
sales now or they're about say, they're up to about.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Fifteen percent of sales prior to when the government removed
the clean can't discampt that in twenty twenty three they've
dropped off now.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
To more like four percent. Ounds so it had picked
up from about.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Four percent to about fifteen percent with their clean cut
discounts now back to about four percent.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Quick numbers.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
It would suggest that had that discount continued at that
rate would continue, we'ld have about a thirty thousand more
electric vehicles on our roads now, possibly more because it
probably would have continued to grow. That would be thirty
thousand households that no longer are stressing about what the
price of petrol is that's a small number in the
grand scheme of how many vehicles we have on our roads,
(12:35):
but every bit will help and helping me, helping people
get around and helping the economy continue being less affected
and so encouraging Moving back to encouraging more people to
buy an EV, whether that be through some sort of
rebate scheme that or have you, there's something that the
government should definitely be considering long term. Other countries that
(12:55):
have done that in Norway, for example, I think are
up to like ninety percent of sales evs now from
from those sort of roommates and what have you.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
So those are the sort of things we should be
doing long term.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
But there's going to be a challenge, particularly in the
short term, because there's going to be a lot of
demand to while those guys is not going to be
a lot of stock in the country, and it's going
to be hard. I'm getting from from vehicle important, it's
gonna be hard to get their stock them because every
other country is going to want to be clamoring for
these now as much as possible.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Why did the government get rid of the clean car discount?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Essentially they thought it was a cultural Actually they didn't.
They didn't want to be encouraging electory vehicles as much.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Right, so, like the whole greenies are going to be
getting this discount. You know, it's all about climate change, except.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
We opposed that, so will rumor of it, and so
it is essentially that the guests of it, so that.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
They need to get over there.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Same with things like speed limits, that will be a
challenging thing for them to want to do because they're
trying to increase speed limits. That these are the sort
of things that could that could be done that could
both long term and short term help reduce usage. You know,
it doesn't mean that they have to stay away foreman,
but those are the things we could do to reduce
that youth and get more out of the fuel that
(14:06):
we've got.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Thanks for joining us, Matt.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzidherld dot co dot enz The Front Page is
hosted and produced by me Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Caine.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Dickie is our studio operator, Richard Martin, our producer and editor,
and our executive producer is Jane Ye, follow the front
page on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts,
and join us next time for another look beyond the headlines.
Kielda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. If you're
old enough then you'll remember there was a time when
every key we household had to pick a week day
where they wouldn't drive. Carlos Days were introduced in nineteen
(00:28):
seventy nine as an attempt to reduce petrol consumption amid
a global oil shock thanks to the Iranian Revolution. The
scheme was short lived. It was scrapped in nineteen eighty
after it achieved only a minimal reduction in petrol use.
So why are we hearing about it again now if
(00:50):
it failed so miserably and are there alternatives that we
should be looking at closer Today? On the Front Page,
transport commentator and Greater Auckland director Matt Lowry is with
us to break down the idea and maybe what others
there are as petrol prices continue to rise. First off, Matt,
(01:13):
tell me what you know about carless days.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah, the idea of kind of stays comes from the
late seventies, when the last time there was an issue
you have more in a round and it relates to
earlier that you have a pass or when you can
drive your car and you can only drive your car
on certain days of the week, so you know, you
might only better travel on a Monday and a Wednesday
and a Friday instead of Tuesday and Thursday.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
And the idea is to encourage a reduction and oil use.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
And so did it work.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Not really a significant number of people that would get
exemptions for it. And that was back in a time
when most households in New Zealand still only had one car.
That's quite different now and many households have two or
even more cars in them, and so if could quite
be a scenario where you know, even with a carle
(02:04):
Stays implemented that people have different days and they're still
able to travel around and use those additional cars to
continue traveling is normally I think the goal, the goal overall.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Is to reduce usage, but we need to so.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
We need to think about other ways that we can
we can reduce pigal use so that or fuel use
so that we can make what with what stops we've
got lasts longer.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, and I mean whenever the government tries to implementment
something like this, there are always people looking for those loopholes, right,
Like you mentioned, those two car households probably got away
with a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
But I suppose in terms of if we would implement
it now the I understand that there was a bit
of forgery going on, so you had a ticket in
your car or something saying yeah, I can drive this
car every day except Wednesday, for example.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
But nowadays, with technology.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
It would be that portion at least would be a
bit easier to try.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Okay, well you think.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So, but that we require significant enforcement, and yeah, there's
there's plenty of other things that we need police or
other agencies doing that is not enforcing when you when
and where you can drive, you know, without rolling out
significant technology to automate that.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And again that significant COSSM would take a long time.
It wouldn't. That's not a short term solution.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So it doesn't sound to me like something that is
going to be a quick win for reducing fuel use.
And yeah, maybe if we were thinking longer about it,
we might be able to do something, but I don't
think it's certainly nothing that's going to be in place
for in the next few months or weeks or months.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Right, So when the government says they're looking into it,
they're like, well, yeah, we're looking into it, but it's
probably not going to happen. Hey, what else do you
reckon they should be looking into right now?
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, I think there are a couple of other things
that would be practical for a short term solution, you know,
and we saw with COVID that if there's a sort
of rallying together and we can work together type scenario,
people will accept it. But things that could reduce for
your use might be things like reducing speed limits on
our state highways, you know, reducing it from one hundred
down to eighty klometers and now we'll make travel to
(04:10):
take a little bit longer, not too much, but that
does reduce fuel use. Particularly after eighty kilometers, vehicles start
to be more air resistance and burning more fuel to
travel the same distance. So that could be a way
to reduce take a few percent twints off the level
of fuel use, and that might help extend extend things
(04:31):
we do need to be encouraging more walking and cycling,
more public transport in our studies where that's possible. Those
are the things that you know, we can encourage people
to change how they travel. We should be looking at
for businesses that can encouraging more work from home. Again,
you know a lot of businesses that have shift that
started to shift back to mortar being in the office
(04:53):
a lot more still not necessarily what it was proprior
to COVID, but the technology exists that the a lot
of people are still doing it quite significantly and I
am today you know we're working from home. Maybe maybe
an extra day working from home median might be a
way to reduce fuel use for people traveling and if
you're not public transport, walking and slight things are great options.
(05:15):
You know, we could support that with more things like
pop up bike lands in some places, many of our
cities Auckland will into approaches have been expanding there. There
there's slightly networks and we could we could encourage that
further other things also is a lot of there's a
lot of freight that could potentially.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Move to the round network that we could encourage. That
might require more funding for key.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Are hole to get more staff and pay more staff
throughout those times to operate those trains and process all that.
But that could be an option for getting more for
it because rail threat is more efficient in terms of
your use than trucking things around the country. That's not
practical everywhere, but you know, those are sorts of things
that we could we could do.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
And I guess the other thing is how can we
encourage rapidly more electric vehicles. There's to be a bit hard.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
The world's going to be crying out for those as
much as possible at the moment, so it's gonna be
hard to get stocked in, I guess. But more electric vehicles,
whether it be cars, electric bytes, you know, those literal trucks,
all those sort of things, to get ol vehicle fully
off fossil fuels, because there is really what's going to
be you know, that's what's going to hold the economy
to ransom as these fuel prices.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, and there are definitely some kind of short term
fixes I suppose, like you said, and then those longer
term like getting everyone over to evs. Petrels now topping
what three dollars a leter that's over twice the real
nineteen seventy nine peak adjusted for inflation, when they introduce
the carless days. In terms of getting people onto public transports,
(06:52):
say if the government tomorrow was like right to encourage
people to get onto.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
The bus to go to work as opposed to driving
and using fuel. We're going to make public transport costs free.
Do you reckon our network can even hold that many
consumers at once.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Well, we're currently in the busiest time of the year
with March madness, where most of the public transport networks
are used the most. We're still seeing overall public transport
use less than it was prior to COVID. So those
networks have grown since then and have become better.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
And so.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
There is a lot of capacity within the network to
carry more, and there is more that could be done.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
For example, we could extend it would.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Require were again more funding to operate those buses and
trains and all the rest of it, but we could
extend the length of the peak hours peak time so
that people might have to travel slightly later or slightly earlier,
slightly later, but like people do for a cry and
avoid congestion. There's a lot of capacity, particularly in the
off peak, and we could also extend those peak hours
(07:52):
into that a lot more.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
So there is significant capacity there.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
As sure, it's not going to be able to take everyone,
and it's not going to be the only solution that's available,
but it could certainly we could certainly do a lot
more with the public transport capacity we've got. Typically after
Easter public transport use and v or used here to
drop off a little bit, So that will help easy
bit of pressure that we can if we can continue
(08:17):
sort of the March levels of public transport youth throughout
later into the year, that we're taken against.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
The pressure off off the roads and off fuel use.
The only day my daughter doesn't go to kindergarten, sweetly
success post. If we don't have the car, if we
don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Whose car on Tuesday, how will you get to work with?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Oh, well, my husband can catch the bus.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
The human way to select the car stard is to
select the day that causes one the least inconvenience. Surely,
if they choose the day on which they use the
car least, then carless days must be the least effective.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
We're of reducing federal consumption.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Along with Carl stays, I suppose as a big headline
the government's looking into it, but it probably won't won't
go ahead, but it is one of those eye catching
kind of things that we all go, oh, what if
this happened in terms of rationing petrol in the past,
How has that happened.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah, the idea is that you might you might have
a certain budget that you're able to use of fuel,
so everyone has a has where account effectively of you're
allowed that this mere leaders of fuel and you could
obviously trade that or use it or buy it more
from other people. That would work in some situations. Again,
(09:37):
as how you'd set that scheme ut protecting rapidly to
be able to implement that, and how you would monitor
it and put that monitoring and enforcement in place, and
that is always going to be the challenges.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Anything that's going to require significant.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Change like that that's apart from what we used to
is going to take some time to set up and establish,
which is why some of those other options like the
public transfer walking asidely, like you know, just encouraging work
from home are things that we can do now and
we can we can get some success from because.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
You know, we could we could be starting that right
now and help reduce our.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Fuel usage for the next month or two before.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Things get worse.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, and those are all things that I guess doesn't
mean that there will be like a wild West. I
can I can imagine a scenario where we do ration
petrol or something, and there's like guys on street corners
with little you know, jerry cans full of full of
petrol selling them for double or something.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
So the goal of is to try and use more
of the things that we know we can do rather
than trying to something new, I think, because that's where
we're going to have trouble when we have when we're
trying to implement something new, anything we're trying to say
you have to try and restrict or you're very restrictive,
people will try and find ways around. We better define
solutions that people can actually vibely take. And yeah, those
(10:56):
are the things. Some of those we have now I
guess we need more of them. And but those are
the things that work.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
What about do you reckon if the government was given
the opportunity to open up the CRL a bit earlier,
for example, would that help it?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
What in sense that it provides more incentive to youth
public transport, so you know there is it provides new
two use stations in the city center. It makes it
easier to travel and particularly from the Western line, so
that would encourage more people to use the train. So
if we could open that up earlier, that would be fantastic.
There are other pecks, There are other considerations that are
(11:31):
affecting that, like testing and making sure those are all
working and that the neboos operating properly, and how that
directs with the freight trains and what have you. So
if we can get that open sooner, the sooner we can.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Do that, they're better really from my point of view.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
When it comes to longer term fixes. You mentioned electric vehicles.
They currently make up about what fifteen percent of new
sales now or they're about say, they're up to about.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Fifteen percent of sales prior to when the government removed
the clean can't discampt that in twenty twenty three they've
dropped off now.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
To more like four percent. Ounds so it had picked
up from about.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Four percent to about fifteen percent with their clean cut
discounts now back to about four percent.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Quick numbers.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
It would suggest that had that discount continued at that
rate would continue, we'ld have about a thirty thousand more
electric vehicles on our roads now, possibly more because it
probably would have continued to grow. That would be thirty
thousand households that no longer are stressing about what the
price of petrol is that's a small number in the
grand scheme of how many vehicles we have on our roads,
(12:35):
but every bit will help and helping me, helping people
get around and helping the economy continue being less affected
and so encouraging Moving back to encouraging more people to
buy an EV, whether that be through some sort of
rebate scheme that or have you, there's something that the
government should definitely be considering long term. Other countries that
(12:55):
have done that in Norway, for example, I think are
up to like ninety percent of sales evs now from
from those sort of roommates and what have you.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
So those are the sort of things we should be
doing long term.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
But there's going to be a challenge, particularly in the
short term, because there's going to be a lot of
demand to while those guys is not going to be
a lot of stock in the country, and it's going
to be hard. I'm getting from from vehicle important, it's
gonna be hard to get their stock them because every
other country is going to want to be clamoring for
these now as much as possible.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Why did the government get rid of the clean car discount?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Essentially they thought it was a cultural Actually they didn't.
They didn't want to be encouraging electory vehicles as much.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Right, so, like the whole greenies are going to be
getting this discount. You know, it's all about climate change, except.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
We opposed that, so will rumor of it, and so
it is essentially that the guests of it, so that.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
They need to get over there.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Same with things like speed limits, that will be a
challenging thing for them to want to do because they're
trying to increase speed limits. That these are the sort
of things that could that could be done that could
both long term and short term help reduce usage. You know,
it doesn't mean that they have to stay away foreman,
but those are the things we could do to reduce
that youth and get more out of the fuel that
(14:06):
we've got.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Thanks for joining us, Matt.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzidherld dot co dot enz The Front Page is
hosted and produced by me Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Caine.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Dickie is our studio operator, Richard Martin, our producer and editor,
and our executive producer is Jane Ye, follow the front
page on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts,
and join us next time for another look beyond the headlines.
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