Page 2223 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 June 1990
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quickly to achieve uniformity in this area. I would suggest that perhaps Mr Collaery could place uniformity and cooperation in this area on the agenda of the next meeting of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General.
If the States and Territories fail to act, the inevitable result, I suggest, will be Commonwealth action. There will be the usual cry of States rights being overridden, but it may simply be that the States have not got their act together. If we expect to retain an effective role for State legislation, we need to coordinate. This is the perfect example of two divergent State approaches being taken at the first instance - a general move towards one type of legislative solution, the registrar scheme, reaching a point where every State and Territory has that type of legislation, but a lack of uniformity. There is another small step to go to achieve that uniformity. The Opposition supports both the principal Bill and the consequential amendments Bill.
MS MAHER (5.27): Mr Speaker, the Attorney-General has already mentioned in his presentation speech the difficulties encountered by consumers when purchasing a motor vehicle. We are all no doubt aware of instances where persons have purchased a motor vehicle privately only to discover at a later date that the vehicle is subject to an encumbrance held by a finance company or some other person. In such cases the purchaser is usually left with little choice but to pay off the debt incurred by the previous owner if he or she wishes to retain possession of the vehicle. Quite often this places an intolerable burden on the purchaser, who, having already paid a considerable amount to acquire the vehicle in the first place, is saddled with an additional cost of paying off the debt to the financier.
Provisions in the Sale of Motor Vehicles Act 1977, the Sale of Goods Act 1954 and the Trade Practices Act 1974 already provide a measure of protection for purchasers who buy an encumbered vehicle. However, the remedies provided in the legislation usually involve considerable time and additional expense to the consumer. In many instances the original owner cannot be found, in which case the purchaser has no effective remedy at all.
The Registration of Interests in Goods Bill will remedy these inadequacies in the existing law by establishing a registration scheme that will allow the financier to publicly register an interest in a motor vehicle as prospective purchaser of that financier's interest. Likewise, the purchaser will be able to search the register to ascertain the legal status of a particular vehicle at the time of purchase. A financier who registers an interest in the register will be deemed to have given notice to the prospective buyer. The change in the law with respect to title in motor vehicles will encourage financiers to register their interests if they wish to gain the protection afforded by the scheme once it becomes
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