10. DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this
to the Minister of Transport
How many emails has he received on the decision of the New Zealand Transport Agency to start charging CarJam and similar web-based information services for accessing the agency’s stored basic motor vehicle information?
Mr SPEAKERI ask front-bench members to please stop this interjection. It was difficult for me to hear the question.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) Link to this
Following CarJam emailing its customer database and posting a message on the front page of its website, which apparently has about 150,000 subscribers per month, my office has received about 4,500 form emails on this issue.
Does he agree that free website access to a motor vehicle’s history is a cheap and effective way of keeping dodgy and potentially dangerous vehicles off our roads; if so, what does he say to those 20,000 people who have signed the online petition protesting his decision to claw back a few dollars in the name of user-pays?
That question is wrong in its assumptions on so many levels. Let me just deal with a couple. Firstly, in most cases the charges for accessing that information have been reduced. Secondly, the changes that the New Zealand Transport Agency has made will reduce the total revenue received from providing the service. Thirdly, the business model of the websites—to access the one or two items that have previously been free, to give that away free, and then to charge significant sums of money for more detailed reports—has led to massive increases in the amount of data. That means that the New Zealand Transport Agency has had to charge for some of that data. Finally, all this is the reality of having a very old motor vehicles register that is unable to provide the information easily to users. That has happened because the previous Government, over 9 years, never spent the money to update the motor vehicles register.
I apologise to the member. I say to her colleagues sitting on the bench in front of her that when they interject it is difficult for me to hear her question. What is more, it is discourteous.
By applying the user-pays model to motor vehicle registration information, is the Government telling us that dodgy practices—such as clocking odometers, patching up written-off vehicles, flicking off stolen vehicles on TradeMe, or onselling repossessed cars that have money still owing—have all mysteriously ceased to be a problem in the used-car market?
No, and I point out again for the member that the previous Government operated this same user-pays model. In fact, the New Zealand Transport Agency is collecting less revenue now than it was previously. The transactions the member refers to are 16c for an instant transaction and 2c for an overnight transaction—2c. It could, of course, be 2c for all transactions if the previous Government had got around to updating the motor vehicles register. In that Government’s 9 years in office it absolutely neglected core business.
Why would the New Zealand Transport Agency have the marketing slogan “Building a better transport system for New Zealanders” while at the same time reduce access to the information that helps make our national fleet safer, and also make it more difficult for already hard-pressed families to make the best decision when purchasing a vehicle?
The member has not been listening to the answers to any of the previous questions. Sadly, if the previous Government had adopted an approach of making sure that Government business ran properly and had taken a responsible approach to renewing infrastructure, we would not be in the position of having to charge 16c for instant transactions; we would be able to charge 2c for the lot. In fact, the New Zealand Transport Agency is lowering the amount of revenue it is receiving.