Brownlee Gerry: Motor Vehicle Sales Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Brownlee Gerry: Motor Vehicle Sales Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
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GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
: 
 We are deep into the second day of urgency and about to pass the Motor Vehicle Sales Bill that is urgently needed by the industry. That industry has been waiting 4 years for this bill but here we are today finally and urgently passing it. 
John Carter 
: After 4 years 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: After 4 years the Minister Harry Duynhoven has finally got around to getting the bill to the House. I suppose I should start by congratulating him on such a fine display of the work ethic. 
This bill is also interesting because it is a step to the right for the Labour Government. Essentially the bill removes some compliance and a lot of regulation gets rid of a whole lot of red tape and simplifies the way in which motor vehicle dealers are able to operate. That is good and that is why we are supporting it. But as is always the case with the Labour Government it is one step to the right and then a quick shuffle back to the left. At the last minute after 4 years of consideration—4 long years of wondering whether this bill would be passed and then finally deciding to do it urgently—we find that a Supplementary Order Paper has been dropped on the table. 
John Carter 
: What is wrong with that? 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Members might ask what is wrong with that. In fact we have just discovered that on page 5 of the Supplementary Order Paper under new clause 130A the Labour Government is introducing a sales tax. This is the Labour Government that said “No new taxes.”—unless one earns a lot of money. The Minister of Transport is sneaking in a sales tax in the guise of a levy. New clause 130A states: “Regulations may impose levy”. When we are trying to simplify the process for motor vehicle salespeople and when the House is trying to recognise the way in which cars are bought and sold in this country nowadays one would have to ask why there is to be a sales tax on vehicles that commercial traders sell. That is quite alarming for us and it would have been nice if we could have had an answer from the Minister during the Committee stage about why that is necessary. 
It appears that the Minister is still thinking about how big that sales tax will be. The legislation provides that the Governor-General may by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister make regulations prescribing different levies for different classes of motor vehicle traders. So we will have a truck sales tax a tractor sales tax a four-wheel drive sales tax a people-carriers sales tax—all those seven-seater vehicles that mums throughout the country buy in order to take the kids from schools to all those events around the countryside that they need to get to. I would like the Minister to tell us how much consultation he had with Paul Adams from United Future. I understand that that particular gentleman knows a little bit about selling motorcars as well as driving them. 
Hundreds of emails have come in in the last couple of hours complaining about that levy. It is not at all fair that after 4 years of consultation with the industry suddenly there is an urgent decision to pass the bill to get a bit more tax from honest traders in this country. It is quite ridiculous. We are told that the Minister did not consult the industry and that the industry did not know the levy was coming. It was simply a backhanded way of stealthily applying a little more tax burden on the community. 
As we have said there are one or two good things in the bill. It deals with the activities of people who line cars up and down the sides of various motorways on the weekends and parade them as a car fair. In essence that is an entrepreneurial activity and this country does not need to impinge in any way on the activities of those who act in an entrepreneurial spirit. I want to know whether the Minister will now go to the Minister of Finance to seek an appropriation so that he can have car-fair police out there every weekend applying the new levy to New Zealanders who decide to sell their cars privately. If the levy applies only to licensed motor vehicle dealers—or whatever they will be described as as a result of the passing of this legislation—then surely that is another business-unfriendly attack by this Government on honest traders. 
There is of course a controversial element in the bill and that is the removal of the fidelity guarantee fund. The fund did cost a lot of money and was added into the cost of every car. The Minister might be able to say that the levy will not alter the cost of buying a motor car on the lot but that is only because the levy will be offset by what the car dealer used to have to pay into the fidelity guarantee fund. The difference now is that it is the Minister who collects the money and the poor old consumer is left without the protection the fidelity guarantee fund once gave. There are some good reasons for that. Car prices have fallen considerably in the last few years. The value of the vehicle fleet these days although greatly expanded is on average a little less than it used to be. Of course the vehicles being sold these days are so much more reliable. I remember that the first car I bought was 20 years old and compared to other cars on the road it looked well out of date. These days a person could not buy a 20-year-old car because they are simply not on the roads. More likely he or she would be buying a 10-year-old car and that car would still look reasonably stylish and up to the minute. 
We cannot underestimate the effect that this stealth tax will have on the industry. We cannot underestimate the cost it will put upon those people who are buying cars. We should be sounding that caution because although we are supporting this bill we have concerns about that. We are pleased to see that there will be a registrar of operators that will cover a much wider group including auctioneers fairs and Internet car sales. The question that goes unanswered is whether those sorts of individual traders will be stuck with the new sales tax that the Government has introduced today.