Page 4276 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 23 October 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
At forum meetings this year, ministers endorsed a regulatory impact assessment of options to ensure that businesses comply with the consumer guarantees and that consumers can access the remedies to which they are entitled. Again, the ACT is part of this forum and contributes to the discussion. As far as statutory warranties go, the ACT currently offers a statutory warranty of three months or 5,000 kilometres for vehicles under 10 years with less than 160,000 kilometres on the clock. This is exactly the same as the protections offered by New South Wales and Victoria.
The opposition remains to be convinced of the need for the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal’s jurisdictional limit for motor vehicles to be increased. The jurisdictional limit for the ACT is high when compared to other administrative tribunals around the country.
Looking at the proposal to introduce a limit on the number of faults that a motor vehicle can have, it is important to understand that a modern motor vehicle is a complex piece of computerised machinery consisting of around 60,000 parts and containing in excess of 10 million lines of computer coding. Cars are simply not the same as they were years ago.
Given the complexity and growing sophistication of each new vehicle model that is released, any reasonable consumer would expect minor or unfamiliar glitches to be rectified during the manufacturer’s warranty period. In some cases manufacturers can offer up to seven years warranty for this very reason and as an incentive to buy the brand.
In a newly purchased car, it may be that the same fault occurs again and again before being resolved, as the tale of symptoms needs to be addressed to find the underlying cause. Therefore, placing a nominal limit on the repair attempts completely ignores the complexity of modern car technology.
Setting the ACT apart from other jurisdictions is nonsensical in this context. Creating specific rules for the ACT that are inconsistent with other states is unhelpful, to say the least. Consumer protections would differ depending on which state the vehicle was purchased in and would create greater uncertainty for consumers as to what rights and obligations they might have.
Looking now at the proposal to extend the cooling-off period for a purchaser, we must remember that a seven-day cooling-off period would be longer than the cooling-off period for purchasing a house, and that is a right that is most commonly waived when purchasing property in the ACT. This is simply not a reasonable or considered proposal.
There are some things that could be done to avoid unnecessary surprises when buying an old car—one that has been around the block more than once—such as ensuring that purchasers are informed of their legal right to have an independent inspection done prior to purchasing. To use Jess’s example, as Ms Cheyne outlined, that simple action would have alleviated a whole lot of unnecessary stress, worry, frustration, anger and resentment that goes along with finding out that you have made a poor purchasing decision.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video