For more than a century, the law around excise in Australia followed a familiar path.

Narrow. Technical. Predictable.

Excise was generally understood as a tax placed on goods at the point of production or sale, something tied to where goods were made, distributed, or first entered the market.

That understanding held for over 120 years.

Until it didn’t.

The Turning Point

In Vanderstock v Victoria, the High Court didn’t just adjust the law.

It reset it.

The case looked at a charge imposed on electric vehicle users, a per-kilometre fee for using public roads.

It was framed as a road user charge.

But the Court looked past the label.

It asked what the charge actually did.

And the answer mattered.

What Changed

The High Court confirmed something significant:

A tax does not need to be imposed at the point of production or sale to be an excise.

It can arise later, at the point where goods are used or consumed.

That shift may sound technical.

It isn’t.

Because it expands the reach of what counts as an excise beyond where it has historically been confined.

In simple terms:

If a charge operates like a tax on the use of goods, it may fall within section 90, even if it doesn’t look like a traditional tax.

Why That Matters

For decades, systems have been built on the assumption that certain charges fall outside excise.

Entire frameworks.
Long-term agreements.
Multi-billion-dollar structures.

All resting on an understanding of the law that no longer holds in the same way.

When the foundation shifts, everything built on top of it has to be looked at again.

From Electric Vehicles to Everyday Roads

The Vanderstock case was about electric vehicles.

But the principle is broader than that.

It reaches into any system where people are charged for using something that forms part of ordinary, necessary movement, including roads.

Which raises a difficult question:

If a per-kilometre road charge can be an excise…what about tolls?

A Door That Was Closed

For a long time, arguments like this didn’t go anywhere.

The doctrine was settled.
The boundaries were tight.
The answer was largely known in advance.

Vanderstock changed that.

It didn’t decide every future case.

But it reopened the door.

What Comes Next

The law is now in a different place than it was before 2023.

Not uncertain, but broader.
Not unclear, but less confined.

And where the law moves, it creates space for questions that once had no path forward.

This legal challenge sits right in that space.

There’s something about long-held ideas. They settle in like old timber, solid, familiar, trusted. Until one day, a crack runs through them. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just enough to make you realise the structure might not be what you thought it was