Motorists are always easy prey when government – whether national or local – is looking for new sources of income. Wellington Regional Council has wasted $198,000 on investigating congestion charges for drivers. Chairwoman Fran Wilde now says the idea “is not on the table”, which is at odds with what she said last year: the council “strongly encourages the inclusion of provision for the introduction of road pricing on existing routes as soon as practicable.”

Former Labour MP Fran has such a waffly way with words, don’t you agree?

The notion of a Wellington congestion charge is absurd. The city’s traffic problems (if there are any) are pathetically minor by world standards and do not bear comparison to once-gridlocked London, where such a charge has been applied with some success – and much glee – by the car-hating collectivist “Red Ken” Livingstone.

London at least has the advantage of a functioning and regular public transport system, unlike the unreliable and ramshackle affair that besets our own capital. Imposition of a new in-your-face tax on drivers (stealth no longer enters into it) will make a visit to Wellington even less enticing. If this goes ahead, they might as well just turn off the city’s lights and we’ll head for somewhere friendlier.

Shopping in Lower Hutt, Porirua or Sydney already offers more appeal.

In the meantime, all potential victims of this legalised robbery should offer a resounding “No!” to the proposal.

If it is adopted, it will not be long before the charges are increased – doubtless on the circular pretext of paying for its administration in the first instance – and the ‘zone’ will gradually be widened. If Wellington follows Red Ken, it won’t be long before some bright spark thinks of a new tax based on your engine size, and City Mayor Kerry flits off with regional council colleague Fran to Venezuela in search of cheap socialist diesel for the buses.

And then some boffin will find a way of making further use of the electronic cash collector on your dashboard – perhaps to monitor your position and movements for something really essential such as “statistical purposes”… or for just plain old snooping. Next thing you know, every cash-strapped town and hamlet in the country will be investing in fancy vehicle surveillance gadgetry, and we’ll have toll booths in Woodville.

Rather than milking the helpless motorist, perhaps these ditsy councillors should look closer to home, and consider cutting down the ridiculous and costly duplication of bureaucracy by combining local authorities into a Greater Wellington Council. Just like Auckland and Hawke’s Bay, the region has an over-inflated system of governance that, while it might make the deluded culprits think that they live in a big country, just wastes everybody else’s money.