CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) Link to this
When we were finishing before lunchtime, I congratulated Heather Roy on the very comprehensive speech that she gave on the third reading of this bill, the Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill. I contrasted her speech with the speech delivered by Minister John Boscawen, who is in charge of the bill and who seemed to have barely a grasp on what the House was debating. He stuck entirely to the scripted notes provided to him by his department. I wondered whether Heather Roy had written the speech herself before she was given the chop from the job and whether John Boscawen had simply come along to the House and delivered her speech. He did not seem to have any grasp of the bill that is being debated. He took only one call at the very beginning of the Committee stage of the bill. That was the only contribution from the Government during the Committee stage. There was a very short call from John Boscawen at the beginning and nothing—
Hon Darren HughesI do not know what he said; it was not all that impressive. He did not really say much. There was no mention of the emissions trading scheme, which was quite a milestone for him. I think it was the only speech that he has ever delivered in the House that did not mention the emissions trading scheme. He did not demonstrate any knowledge of the bill, which he is charge of. He demonstrated that he had no idea about what he will do in the consumer affairs portfolio, which makes one wonder why he is the Minister of Consumer Affairs. What was wrong with the last one? She seemed to be doing an OK job.
The Committee stage of this debate did throw up some interesting pieces of knowledge. Moana Mackey shared with us that she chooses which car to purchase by the number of cup holders it has. It has to be a white car or a silver car, and it has to have a cup holder. We also found out that Moana Mackey made the mistake of choosing a car that did not have a petrol light. She discovered the hard way what that meant. Moana confided to me at lunchtime that she continued to drive the car with no petrol and discovered that it did not have a petrol light only when the car stopped—
Moana MackeySo Moana Mackey—the scientist—thought that providing the petrol light was not on, the car must still have petrol, even though the needle was on empty. She thought that if there was no light blinking at her, the car must still have petrol. That goes to show that even scientists can get it wrong, which is why it is so important that good-quality consumer information is available to consumers purchasing second-hand motor vehicles. That is one of the reasons why the consumer information notices provided when second-hand cars are being sold are really important.
One of the things this bill does is to remove the obligation to provide consumer information notices in the case where a car is being sold privately. However, as I pointed out during the Committee stage of the debate, a number of cheap cars are sold privately. The majority of cheap cars are sold privately, therefore the removal of that obligation is quite a significant issue for young people. Most young people buy cheap cars. They will not go to a car yard and spend five grand or more. They will spend $500 picking up something off TradeMe or off the sale and exchange classified advertisements in a newspaper. So they will need to be very wary of what they purchase.
If there is one message that we need to get through to those who buy cars privately, it is buyer beware. People will not necessarily be given information on whether a person whom they are purchasing a car from still owes somebody else money for the car. If that person still owes somebody else money, then the purchaser could well find themselves facing a liability they were not aware of. People who privately buy cars need to be very cautious. There is definitely a case of buyer beware. But if they purchase a car from a licensed motor vehicle dealer, the dealer needs to provide a consumer information notice stating whether somebody still owes money on that vehicle. That is a very positive thing.
We are here debating this legislation under urgency, again. We had the first reading debate when the House needed to go into urgency about a year and a bit ago, but it took over a year for the bill to suddenly become urgent again. Now we are back under urgency debating the Committee stage and the third reading of it. It was not really urgent in the first place; it is still not really urgent. It is simply poor organisation on the part of the Government, which is absolutely abusing parliamentary process, in my view, in the way that it is handling this bill, as it has with so many others.
The handling of this bill says something, however, about the Government’s sense of priorities. At this time, when it has absolutely no economic plan whatsoever to tell New Zealanders about, it thinks that the single most important priority the House should give its attention to is a bill to reduce compliance costs for used-car salesmen. That is the National Party’s economic plan at this point in time—to reduce compliance costs for used-car salesmen. It does not have anything more important or more urgent to bring before Parliament. Despite the fact that we were here until midnight last night, there is still no economic plan from the Government, still nothing that will close the wage gap with Australia, and still nothing that will put hard-working Kiwis back into jobs. Instead, there are thousands of people lining up outside supermarkets applying for relatively low-wage jobs, and the Government thinks the most important thing that it can do for the New Zealand people is to reduce compliance costs for used-car salesmen. I think that says something about the Government’s priorities.
Finally, on the topic of consumer information notices, I have to say that I hope they have a little bit more credibility and integrity than the voter information notice the National Party distributed before the last election, otherwise known as its pledge card. We know that the voters could not believe a word of it, because National has already broken nearly half of the promises on its pledge card. If that was a consumer information notice, there would be a fair trading case to take on the basis that National broke its promises and that that notice meant nothing. With those comments, I conclude. Thank you very much.
CLARE CURRAN
Hon Lianne Dalziel—erudite and articulate speech from my colleague Chris Hipkins, who raised a number of important points about the Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill, I will reinforce a number of the points that he made, particularly around the fact that this bill is being heard under urgency. I know that we considered a number of alternative names for this bill in earlier speeches in the Committee stage. Given that almost every speech that I have given on this bill has been under urgency, yet my speeches have been several months apart, it raises questions about just how urgent this bill actually is—or how much of a fill-in it is.
One of the main topics of discussion that we had in the Committee stage was a very important conversation on the importance of the vehicle purchasing decision that people make. When they make the decision to buy a house or a car, particularly when they do so in an online environment, there are a number of issues attached to that decision. That is why it is so important that the legislation is being updated to take account of all the dangers that can occur. One of the discussions that we had was on the vehicle purchasing decisions that people made when they bought their first car. We heard a lot about the various decisions that people had made. Those people included the Hon Lianne Dalziel, who has never purchased a vehicle online, and my colleague Moana Mackey, who leaves a little to be desired in terms of her knowledge about vehicle purchasing. Maybe she could do with a bit of assistance next time that she buys one, but she had the courage to admit it. What we were really after, though, was information on the decision made by the new incoming Minister when he purchased his first vehicle. That question was put to him, but, unfortunately, it was never answered.
In my previous speech I referred to the Labour Party blog, Red Alert. It ran a piece on this matter a few months ago and had a lot of responses. Today, in another short post, it has received a lot more responses. There was a very helpful and interesting comment from a member of the public, guessing about the ACT Party members’ choice of their first vehicle. I thought I would share it with the House. The guess was that the current Minister, John Boscawen, chose a coal-powered vehicle, and, helpfully, the person provided suggestions on what other ACT Party members had as their first vehicle. The person suggested that David Garrett’s choice was a horse that responded well to a good whipping; that Rodney Hide’s choice was a bulldozer; that Heather Roy, the previous Minister, probably had an Alfa Romeo, which is attractive but temperamental and does not always perform as expected; and that Roger Douglas’ choice was a chariot—
No, David Garrett’s choice was the horse; Roger Douglas’s choice was a chariot, which could have been pulled by peasants who were lucky to have the privilege of pulling it. I thought that that was an interesting comment.
Going back to this bill and thinking about its main provisions, I will mention one particular amendment: the removal of the requirement for a private seller to display a consumer information notice when selling through a car market, and for car market operators to take steps to ensure that a private seller displays that information notice. It places a new onus on the car market operator to ensure that motor vehicle traders display that notice.
There is also the removal of car market operators from the definition of a “motor vehicle trader”, unless they are selling vehicles as compared with providing a venue where sales occur. Car market operators are not motor vehicle traders. That provision is quite important, because it clarifies the law for companies such as TradeMe, which was formerly defined as a car market operator rather than as simply a venue where sales occur. I draw the attention of the House to the submission that was made to the Commerce Committee from TradeMe, explaining that the current law meant that each of the 175,000 motor vehicle auctions that have been listed on TradeMe in the last year would have had to include a consumer information notice. In reality, that was not enforced by the Commerce Commission, so this amendment simply catches up with what everybody in the industry has agreed made sense.
I make reference to the number of vehicles that are being sold online. It is estimated that up to 70 percent of cars are being bought and sold privately, which is quite significant. In terms of car sales in 2008, 187,000 were sold by dealers to the public, 125,000 were sold by the public to dealers, and 462,000 were private sales. That is a significant number. It is believed that a significant number of those cars are now being sold online. Traders who are using online auction sites to sell motor vehicles have been put on notice by the Commerce Commission. There was a story in the New Zealand Herald a few days ago about this issue, saying the Commerce Commission wants traders to take their legal obligations more seriously. That warning came after a TradeMe seller had said, in a listing, that he was selling the car on behalf of his sister, and he had made other statements about the car’s reliability and service history. A Commerce Commission investigation found those statements to be untrue. Apparently, that person had sold more than eight cars on TradeMe over a 12-month period and had not provided consumer information notices on at least two of those sales.
It is good that the Commerce Commission took this matter very seriously and issued a warning. It is important that all motor vehicle traders be put on notice that the Commerce Commission expects them to take their legal obligations seriously. The point is quite well made that with new technology, changes in technology, and changes in the way that people are making purchases—first cars or otherwise—the way that vehicles are sold and the information that buyers can expect to get are very important matters. As my colleague Chris Hipkins pointed out, it has very much been a buyer-beware situation. We have had information reported to the House today during the debate on this bill that the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal has received 245 dispute applications this year, which is an increase on the 228 received for the year ended June 2009. The new Minister of Consumer Affairs noted, in a media release just the other day, that the tribunal had found in the consumer’s favour in around 70 percent of the cases, and that almost 80 percent were decided using the Consumer Guarantees Act. That essentially highlights the need for a change in the legislation.
Labour supports this common-sense bill, which builds on the work that was done by my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel. It was initiated under the previous Labour Government, and, as we have heard, it will make a difference, given New Zealand’s high per capita rate of vehicle ownership. We heard earlier from one of the Green members that there are something like four million cars in New Zealand. The bill will make a difference because it is about protecting consumers. I commend the bill to the House.