Coddington Deborah: Motor Vehicle Sales Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Coddington Deborah: Motor Vehicle Sales Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:4784] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I am going to say something positive about Part 4—the enforcement part of the bill. 
Hon Member 
: That is a change. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: No I have not changed; I am often positive about things. I am positive about this list of banned persons. It is a good idea to have a list of banned persons to be kept by the registrar. This part of the bill has been very well-thought-out and carefully drafted. The list will be electronic it will comply with the Privacy Act and it will not breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Hopefully this part of the legislation will set a precedent in respect of people who prey on vulnerable members of the public. The public will be able to access the list on the register see the history of those people see whether they are legitimate car dealers and armed with that information make up their own minds about what they want to do. 
So I congratulate the Minister on having this provision in the bill but I would ask her to take a call and explain what happens—because the Crown can be exempted from some of the clauses in this bill—when a dealer is banned from trading in vehicles and the Customs Service has seized imported cars. Contrary to Paul Adams’ statement that “clocking” is not an imported-car problem it is an imported-car problem. If it is not why is the Customs Service still seizing up to 1000 cars a year because it suspects that the odometers have been tampered with? Those are cars coming across the wharf. When I last went to school that meant they were imported. Now the Customs Service sells those cars and takes the money and the importer does not get anything back. What happens to that importer? I presume the importer is listed on that list of dodgy dealers. The cars are seized because they are suspected of being unsafe so we would expect that they would then be broken up and sold for parts or that the importer would be ordered to cover the cost of sending them back to the country from which they came. But that is not actually what happens—they do get passed on to the unsuspecting public. The first time they are passed on it will be with a history of possibly having a “clocked” odometer but that is as far as it goes. The Crown passes on liability to the first dealer who takes those cars after the Crown has seized them. It exempts itself from any liability that might arise when some unsuspecting person buys a car as the second or third purchaser and finds it has done a lot more mileage than he or she suspected. 
I would like to query something else. Two-thirds of car sales in this country do not go through dealers. Under this bill an individual is entitled to sell up to six cars a year before having to be registered. Does that mean that a family of six could sell 30 cars a year without being registered as a dealer? 
Paul Adams 
: Not if they make a profit. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: How do we prove that? They are not registered so we will not know what they are doing. How do we know whether they are making a profit? Those are two things that I call on the Minister to answer. 
As I said I congratulate her on the banned persons list. I think it is a good idea. Hopefully it is a precedent for other lists that might come before this House of people who should not be trusted in respect of the vulnerable public—especially those who are under age. I ask her to answer those two questions about what happens when the Customs Service passes on the cars to the public and how we tell whether unlicensed traders who can sell up to six cars a year are making a profit? 
The question was put that the following amendment and the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 30 in the name of Hon Judith Tizard to Part 4 be agreed to: 
to omit from subclause 4(b) of clause 65 the words “period of”.