The key automotive aftermarket body has continued its attacks on the NSW plan to mandate specific training for EVs that it argues will add burdens to workshop and likely decrease the number of repairers.
The Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association maintains the plan requiring every technician who works on an EV to have the AURSS00064 would add onerous duplication and cost for businesses.
The AAAS has run a campaign against what it sees as unnecessary and poorly planned legislation that could decrease the number of qualified repairs and have impacts on EV owners in NSW.
AAAA CEO Stuart Charity described the policy as a ‘mess’.
“No other state is doing this. The model is flawed, the consultation process has been poor, and the regulatory impact assessment is frankly embarrassing,” he says.
“The Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS), released to support the proposal, fails to include any economic modelling — not a single estimate of the cost to train staff, nor any quantification of the cost to businesses.
“The easiest path for many workshops will be to simply stop servicing EVs.
The RIS didn’t even attempt to quantify this training mandate as a business cost. There’s no modelling, no course availability analysis, no unintended consequences examined. How do you put forward a Regulatory Impact Statement with zero cost estimates and call it complete?”
“With EVs currently making up just two per cent of workshop throughput, the cost burden is significant — but completely unaccounted for.
Headway
But after several months of criticising the policy, the AAAA is now confident the premier Chris Minns has taken an interest in the matter.
The AAAA says the proposal is based on outdated assumptions — particularly the false belief that industry won’t train unless forced to do so.
“It assumes that unless the government intervenes, our industry will operate unsafely. That’s simply not true. We train because we are professionals — safety is core to what we do, and to how we build trust with our customers and our teams, ” Charity says.
Transition period
He says a “transition period” also being discussed by the Office of Fair Trading — a three-to-five-year window in which the regulations would apply but not be enforced, was also reprehensible because of the pressure it placed on workshops.
“Let’s be clear — this is not a real transition,” Charity says.
“It’s not written into the regulations. It’s just a non-enforcement promise that could be revoked at any time. That leaves workshops in an impossible position — either break the law and hope for the best or refuse EV work and let the backlog grow.”