Mapp Wayne: Motor Vehicle Sales Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Motor Vehicle Sales Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:4758] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore) 
: 
 I take particular interest in this bill and the reason is that many years ago when I used to practice law on a regular basis the members of this industry were a major sector of my clientele. I can tell members my having applied for numerous motor vehicle dealer licences registration for salespeople and all of that that it was a really complicated difficult and demanding system. I tell members there was a great deal of expectation of expectancy that this bill would reduce costs and generally speaking it does. 
What alarms me when I look at the title is that it does not make sufficient reference to the secret plans of the Government on the one hand to take and on the other hand stealthily to reregulate. The Government has come up with what is actually a quite credible bill I would have to concede—and National is voting for the principle of the bill generally—but what greatly concerns me is Supplementary Order Paper 30 which includes the amendment that was accurately described by Deborah Coddington of the ACT party as the reintroduction by the Government of a tax on thousands of entrepreneurs up and down this country. The Government may just toss this off to one side as being of no particular account but if it looked at the bill it would understand the serious injury it is doing to New Zealand entrepreneurs—hard-working small-business people by and large. They are the sorts of people who Labour is wont to say these days are its supporters. So what does it do to those people? It gives them a hard kick up the butt. 
John Carter 
: Shove them right up. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: Well there you are! Those are not the sorts of words I would use I hasten to add but that is the reality. 
This is my concern. Under the bill which is intended to be a deregulatory bill there is only one charge and that is at the time of the initial registration. By and large thereafter we would have light-handed regulation—something that the industry could live with. I imagine the ACT party would probably say that was still going too far but nevertheless it is something the industry could live with. What is of particular concern however is that under the Supplementary Order Paper there is now an annual levy based on classes of trader based on the types of vehicles and it has to be applied to thousands of people. It is allegedly to pay for the disputes tribunal. But what the Government is doing is actually adding cost after cost on an annual basis to these hard-working people. 
Two problems exist. First is the cost of administration which is very significant indeed when one considers that those businesses will have to employ special staff develop a computer system track records and so forth. Secondly how do we ensure that everyone actually pays? What do we do about the people who do not pay? Do we have a special regulatory regime that hunts down those people? That is the kind of approach that this leads to. We cannot I presume pass a legislative measure then have no enforcement mechanism. That would be illogical. 
So I would say this to the Government. It had a choice: it could have had a modest imposition for the cost of the disputes tribunal to be charged to those who actually use it—and that may be the appropriate mechanism—or it could have funded it out of general taxation. Both those choices would have been simple. 
Simon Power 
: Like courts. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: “Like courts” as my colleague the former justice spokesperson says. What an excellent example! But instead the Government has gone for a blunt and crude instrument of a generalised levy which has to be collected each and every year with all the range of draconian apparatuses to punish those who do not pay it. So under the guise of deregulation we now have a completely new and demanding regulatory regime.