Broadening the scope of the NSW government's proposed road user charge could help it avoid a legal challenge like one that overturned a similar fee in Victoria, experts say, but it could also unfairly penalise petrol and diesel vehicle owners.
The proposal was one of several raised at the first hearing of a NSW inquiry into road user charges on Wednesday, which also heard calls to delay a tax for up to a decade.
The NSW government planned to introduce a road-user charge to electric and hybrid plug-in electric vehicles in July 2027, charging drivers more than two cents for every kilometre they travelled.
The measure was expected to collect $214 million in its first two years.
A similar road-user charge in Victoria was struck down by the High Court in 2023, but University of Sydney constitutional law professor emerita Anne Twomey called the ruling flawed.
The NSW government could seek to avoid a similar outcome, she said, by designing the charge to fund road maintenance and applying it to all vehicles based on weight.
"Ultimately, it would preferable to overturn it but, having said that… it would be a bold move to just rock up to the court and say, well your judgment was rubbish, have another go," Prof Twomey said.
"Probably a better way is to try and just shift the focus of the law because ultimately, in the end, what it is actually intended to do is raise the money that's needed to repair the roads and build the bridges."
Fuel excise should be removed in this case, she said, to avoid any unfair burden.
Representatives from Infrastructure Partnerships Australia and the NRMA supported the charge as designed, however, with NRMA policy general manager Robert Giltinan argued the fee would not hinder electric car adoption.
"The further we delay it, the harder it becomes to implement it," he said.
But Electric Vehicle Council members said a charge should not be introduced until EVs made up 30 per cent of the national fleet, which could take a decade or more.
Electric cars represented two per cent of all vehicles, council chief executive Julie Delvecchio said, and research showed a fee would slow sales.
"We consider it to be the wrong model at the wrong time," she said.
"A road user charge that's introduced before we hit 30 per cent of the fleet will mean that we may not meet our five million EVs target by 2035."
The inquiry will continue on June 29.
