Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill: 3rd Reading

Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Rahui Katene, MP for Te Tai Tonga

It is a pleasure to stand and speak on the third reading of the Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill, and especially to follow the previous Minister of Consumer of Affairs and hear the details she was able to give. The purpose of the bill is pretty straight-forward, it is to promote and protect car buyers.

That is an honourable goal and is consistent with other bills that have gone through the House under urgency, such as the bill to protect the rights of investors by focusing on standards for financial advisers. The bill amends the process for motor vehicle traders to renew their annual registration and it extends the range of people banned from car-trading. That makes pretty good sense to the Māori Party that those who stoop to give false registration information, or those who have lapsed registrations, should not be rewarded with opportunities to trade.

So we are pleased to support this bill all the way through and will continue to do so. However, I have a couple of concerns. The bill promotes and protects car buyers but unfortunately it has a huge gap, in that it does not protect car drivers from people like Ms Mackey who feel that the only thing they need is that the car be white and have a cup-holder. I think that my son, before he bought his last car must have been speaking to her mother because he bought a white one as well. It had more than a cup-holder though. Since then he has spent more money on upgrading his car than on buying it. Since he bought it he has lowered it, he has mags on it. I recognise mags, because when one takes the car out on a bright Wellington day one is blinded by all the bling. But the thing that he spent all his money on was the sound system, and because of the amount of bass one can hear that car coming for miles around. I do not know whether he was talking to her mother when he put all of that into his car but we really need to be looking at cars for things other than whether they have the right sound, colour, or those sorts of things. Maybe we need to think about making some amendments to make sure that car buyers buy a car and not a “sound system on mags”.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Support New Zealand music, not overseas cars.

RAHUI KATENE; It is a bit late now; next time! I also cannot leave this debate without making the connection to some of the other policy priorities that are impacting on Parliament during this last week.

The first is to raise public awareness of young drivers’ crash risk. The statistics for the years 2006 to 2008 show that of all the drivers involved in fatal crashes the 20 to 24 and 25 to 29-year-old age groups were the most likely to be affected by alcohol/drugs. To that end we support the need to improve road safety education available to young people and to increase access to it. Somewhere, hopefully, we will be able to deal with that issue. The Māori Party supports this bill.

We support the decision for tribunal findings being available on the Internet and the focus on greater transparency and accountability. It is about a better deal for consumers and keeping the traders honest. This bill will help consumers in disputes that relate to misrepresentation about the condition of vehicles for sale, and provide some protection from unsafe traders. We are particularly aware of the requirement for traders to display a consumer information notice on vehicles. That is a positive move and will add to the general safety and protection of the New Zealand consumer.

We congratulate the previous Minister of Consumer Affairs and the current Minister on their initiatives in this regard. We are supportive of the bill and its consumer focus, and make the point that of course there are many other initiatives that we must promote and uphold as part of any approach to keep New Zealanders safe on the road.

ENDS