Hyundai New Zealand Executive Director, Philip Eustace, spoke out today against what he believes is a failed Road User Charges (RUC) review.

"The recent review on diesel vehicles provided an opportunity to give RUC's a complete overhaul but instead resulted in the system merely being tinkered with. An inefficient and outmoded form of tax collection has been retained with the supposed promise of improvements in the future." Says Mr Eustace.

Mr Eustace believes a recent statement by the Prime Minister and his Ministers that New Zealand would see the reduction of 1990 emission levels by ten percent to twenty percent by 2020 has been completely overlooked in the penalising of diesel cars under two tonnes by taxing them more than their petrol equivalents.

The Government's own transport policy has been completely forgotten in this extract from the Strategic Direction Statement of Intent 2009-2012 in that: 'The Government is also committed to reducing greenhouse emissions and confronting global climate change.'

Yet instead of encouraging the use of small, fuel efficient and low CO2 emitting diesel cars, they are still penalising them. "It is quite right that light diesel vehicles over two tonnes don't pay enough road tax via the RUC system but it should also be questioned as to whether a single 44 tonne truck is paying their fair share of RUC when they produce the same wear and tear on roads as 100,000 average cars - and yet the government is still looking at increasing the truck loadings!"

Mr Eustace finished by saying; "As diesel engines are inherently more fuel efficient than their petrol counterparts it has been predicted that in the next five to ten years there will be a significant uptake in diesel cars worldwide. For instance over fifty percent of cars on the road in Europe run on diesel and the US has hastened its introduction of diesel engines to meet the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) requirements. New Zealand is blind to that future with the RUC system it has chosen to keep in place."