Katene Rahui: Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Katene Rahui: Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
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RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—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 Heather Roy and hear the details that she was able to give. The purpose of the bill is pretty straightforward: to promote and protect car buyers. That is an honourable goal and is consistent with that of 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 also extends the range of people banned from car trading. It makes pretty good sense to the Maori Party that those who stoop to give false registration information or those who have lapsed registrations should not be rewarded for that with opportunities to trade. So we are pleased to support this bill all the way through the House 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’s mother who feel that the only thing they need is that a 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 he did on buying it. Since he bought it he has lowered it and he has put mag wheels on it. I recognise the mag wheels 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 most of 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 my son was talking to Ms Mackey’s mother when he put all of that into his car but we really need to be looking for things other than whether cars make the right sound and are the right colour—those sorts of things. Maybe we need to think about making some amendments to the bill to make sure that car buyers buy a car and not a sound system on mag wheels. 
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 have been 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-year-old and the 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 the 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 Maori Party supports this bill. We support the decision for tribunal findings to be made available on the Internet and the focus on greater transparency and accountability. The issue is about providing 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 it will 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 it 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 that 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 keeping New Zealanders safe on the road.