Shearer David: Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Shearer David: Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I am very pleased to stand in this moment of urgency to also make a contribution on the Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill. I was not a member of the Commerce Committee but I was pleased that I was able to stand here with my colleagues who worked so cooperatively to get this bill through the committee. We are supporting the second reading of this bill. The bill really builds on and amends slightly the Motor Vehicle Sales Act 2003 which was enacted by the previous Labour Government. This bill was worked on under Labour. It has been heard in this House. It was brought to this House over a year ago and now in urgency we are hopefully going to progress it quickly. 
I will refer to a couple of points about the purpose of this bill which is obviously to promote the interests of consumers in relation to motor vehicle sales. We hear a lot about the trustworthiness or not of used-car salespeople. They are often likened to politicians—all that we can do I think is to raise their profile in the hope that perhaps our profile might be raised as well! The bill makes a number of changes. It helps to reduce compliance costs. It helps the people in the industry with those compliance costs but at the same time it ensures that consumers are guaranteed protection in the buying and selling of used cars. 
As I said before the bill amends not dramatically but slightly the principal Act of 2003 which was brought in under the previous Government. The policy of that Act had several core elements. There was a requirement for those who trade in motor vehicles to be registered; it required the disclosure of information concerning motor vehicles; and it provided for consumer redress through the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal. In many ways it was very good legislation designed to try to tidy up matters and to give clarity and certainty to people who are involved in buying and selling motor vehicles particularly to consumers. However the fact that this bill has come back to the House now under urgency is somewhat perplexing. I would not have thought that we needed to work until midnight to try to progress this bill but nevertheless now that it is here and all sides of the House agree on it I guess the point is to get it through. 
A requirement of the 2003 Act was that it be reviewed after 2 years. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs completed that review and it was tabled in the House in 2006. The review considered how the registration process the banning provisions the information disclosure process and the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal were operating. This amendment bill flows out of that review of the Act’s operation. The review made a number of recommendations. I will not go through them all but I think that the first recommendation is important. Clause 9 sets out an amendment to section 39(2) of the Act to remove the requirement for motor vehicle traders to make an annual statutory declaration of their trading details where those have not changed. That is replaced by a requirement to confirm with each annual renewal that details have not changed. In many ways it is a very simple change but it lessens the requirements on motor vehicle traders to jump through hoops when that is largely unnecessary. The Labour Party just like any other party certainly supports any moves that will enable business in New Zealand to progress more speedily and with the minimum amount of obstacles in its way so it supports those moves. 
One of the technical recommendations in the review was to amend the cc rating of motorcycles. It recommended that paragraph (b)(iii) of the definition of “motor vehicle” in section 6 of the Act be amended to exclude motorcycles up to 50cc not 60cc as it is currently worded in order to reflect the ratings used in other relevant legislation. That brings the Act more or less into line with other legislation. It is more or less a technical change and again it perplexes me that we are here under urgency to ensure that those sorts of changes are made. Why is moving from 60cc to 50cc in a definition considered to be so urgent that we have to put this bill through under urgency? 
The review recommended extending the inspection powers to the Commerce Commission. It recommended that consideration be given to amending the inspection powers set out in sections 124 to 129 of the principal Act to also include the Commerce Commission to allow appropriate enforcement of the information provisions of the Act and it also explored including such inspection powers within the Fair Trading Act 1986 as well. I think this provision in a sense extends the comfort zone and the security that consumers have in the buying and selling of used cars and motor vehicles. 
In that line I say my first car by the way was called Molly. It was a 1958 Morris Minor van. I currently own a 1957 MGA which actually does not have a name. 
Clare Curran 
: So you’ve gone backwards! 
DAVID SHEARER 
: I have gone backwards rather than moving forwards. I have been unsuccessfully trying to restore my MGA for the last 12 or 15 years. It is a hole that I pour money into according to my wife. But I am diverging from this debate. 
I will get back to recommendation No. 8 of the review which was about the ability to award costs to any party for non-attendance at a Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal hearing. Clause 23 of the bill amends clause 14 of schedule 1 of the Act to allow costs to be awarded against any party to a claim for non-attendance at a hearing for no good cause. 
Once again I say the bill tidies up a lot of the provisions of the legislation enacted in 2003. The review of that Act was done in 2006 so it has been sitting there now for 4 years and we have wanted to address its recommendations. It is good that that is being done now but I repeat the point that I have made before about this bill being debated in urgency. My belief is that urgency should be used for critical legislation that needs to go through in a particular time and that will have an important bearing on New Zealand. I do not really think that this bill meets those particular criteria.