The Right to Repair: Fair and Open Competition – Are We There Yet? Seminar was held at the Collision Repair Expo 2024 as part of the Business Education programme.
The seminar was led by Lesley Yates as MC from the AAAA, Bill Hanvey from the Auto Care Association (USA), and Stuart Charity from the AAAA.
Stuart Charity outlined the history of the Right to Repair movement in Australia, the highlights of the law so far, and areas that need improvement.
In Australia, the Right to Repair became enshrined in law in 2022 after a decade-long campaign. Despite this, there are still multiple hurdles in car owners’ way when repairing their cars, including missing information and the navigation of OEM websites.
Charity gave the audience a ‘Score Card’ on the Right to Repair law so far.
“There wasn’t a major issue with right to repair in the industry in 2009, but we knew it was coming because we have international linkages. There was already a lot of activity overseas at that time,” Charity says.
“We also knew it was going to take a long time to get a law in place. We got the ball rolling very early.
“The campaign got the Government to take on the recommendations of the ACCC. This engagement, grass roots campaign got everyone involved, from workshops to both sides of Parliament on board.
“By the time the legislation was introduced into Parliament in 2021, it changed our competition laws.”
Charity’s Right to Repair Score Card
The green ticks
- Functioning sustainable AASRA
- Dedicated Enforcement” ACCC Motor Vehicle Information Scheme MVIS Unit
- Registered technicians/Data is flowing.
- Complaint and referral process
- Dispute resolution.
- Learning and continuous improvement
Areas for improvement
- Untested legislation with no precedent
- No visible enforcement action to date
- Separation of EV from non EV.
- EV Training requirements
- Scan tools and third party data providers
- Low Awareness
- Telematics is not included.
“The right to repair law is principled based. It means that any independent repairer operating in our market can access full dealer information. However, the law isn’t too descriptive on how that information is delivered,” Charity says.
“This is a blessing and a curse. It is blessing that there is flexibility in changing the scheme to suit the market conditions if it is not working. The curse, however, is that there is a lot of grey areas in the legislation and a lot of that will have to be tested by precedent.”
“AASRA is up and running and doing a fantastic job.”