There’s two related but distinct issues here IMO. Australia has two major non-tariff barriers to vehicle imports: the restrictions on parallel importing (of used and new vehicles), as well as Australia’s insistence on its own unique rules for a vehicle to be registerable.
Historically, the parallel import rules have blocked access to cheaper used cars, mostly from Japan, that New Zealand has benefited. The reason that Japan is the major source of vehicles is that it is a (mostly) right hand drive market, and Japan has rules that encourage older cars off the road sooner than either Australia and New Zealand so used car prices are lower.
While this has been a source of cheap Nissan Leaf EVs (in Australia as well as New Zealand as the Leaf has an exemption to the parallel import ban) this is likely to become much less important in the next few years because Japan is an EV laggard and new Chinese EVs are a much better value proposition than second hand Leafs. That said, we should still ditch the parallel import rules!
The design rules, by contrast, are keeping a number of EVs already on sale in New Zealand out of the Australian market.
If a vehicle is safe enough for the EU, it’s almost certainly safe enough for Australia, and the Australian Design Rules are in my view not worth the cost. If they were keeping American pickup trucks off Australian roads, maybe, but the government seems to be happy to welcome these toddler-killers* into the country.
* this is emotive but accurate - as well as being more generally lethal to other road users, the American pickups have terrible frontal visibility resulting in a depressingly high number of American toddlers getting run over in driveways and car parks).
Good article. I must organise my Crikey subscription. I saw an article in the NYT about how China is saturating the global market with cheap petrol cars, so I don’t think much will change soon. I wish we could live in a car free world. Cars are really horrible things. I am on holidays here in Maroochydore and getting by fine without a car. The bus network is affordable, frequent and safe. You can also get those e-scooters if you want to be a nuisance.
There’s two related but distinct issues here IMO. Australia has two major non-tariff barriers to vehicle imports: the restrictions on parallel importing (of used and new vehicles), as well as Australia’s insistence on its own unique rules for a vehicle to be registerable.
Historically, the parallel import rules have blocked access to cheaper used cars, mostly from Japan, that New Zealand has benefited. The reason that Japan is the major source of vehicles is that it is a (mostly) right hand drive market, and Japan has rules that encourage older cars off the road sooner than either Australia and New Zealand so used car prices are lower.
While this has been a source of cheap Nissan Leaf EVs (in Australia as well as New Zealand as the Leaf has an exemption to the parallel import ban) this is likely to become much less important in the next few years because Japan is an EV laggard and new Chinese EVs are a much better value proposition than second hand Leafs. That said, we should still ditch the parallel import rules!
The design rules, by contrast, are keeping a number of EVs already on sale in New Zealand out of the Australian market.
If a vehicle is safe enough for the EU, it’s almost certainly safe enough for Australia, and the Australian Design Rules are in my view not worth the cost. If they were keeping American pickup trucks off Australian roads, maybe, but the government seems to be happy to welcome these toddler-killers* into the country.
* this is emotive but accurate - as well as being more generally lethal to other road users, the American pickups have terrible frontal visibility resulting in a depressingly high number of American toddlers getting run over in driveways and car parks).
Good article. I must organise my Crikey subscription. I saw an article in the NYT about how China is saturating the global market with cheap petrol cars, so I don’t think much will change soon. I wish we could live in a car free world. Cars are really horrible things. I am on holidays here in Maroochydore and getting by fine without a car. The bus network is affordable, frequent and safe. You can also get those e-scooters if you want to be a nuisance.
Sadly, I have had to give up driving, after a few (luckily undamaging) worrying incidents.
I am still hoping that self-driving vehicles become available while I am still around :)
I share this hope, though I am still driving for now
Appeasing the Doubt, Deny, Delay crowd to quiet them down is different from being in agreement with them... how?