Policy ‘deserved to be scrapped’

The Motor Industry Association (MIA) says the government’s clean car upgrade “deserved to be scrapped” and axing the social leasing car scheme makes sense in the current environment.

It follows the announcement by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins on March 13 to dump a range of reforms and emissions reduction measures and to use the savings to help tackle the cost-of-living crisis and the recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle.

David Crawford, MIA’s chief executive, says the clean car upgrade was a “vehicle scrappage scheme in disguise”, albeit heavily modified to target a part of the end-of-life vehicle market. 

“In our view, this scheme was a very expensive way to reduce carbon emissions and deserved to be scrapped,” he adds. 

“It would have done little to address the burgeoning end-of-life vehicles in our fleet.”

When the government first revealed its “scrap and replace” initiative in May last year, the MIA noted designing scrappage schemes for countries without vehicle manufacturing is “challenging”.

Hipkins has also ditched plans for a social leasing car scheme, which was set to provide arrangements for low-income families to access clean cars. Dropping the policy is predicted to deliver savings of $19m to the government. 

“The MIA would have preferred this trail was postponed rather than culled,” says Crawford, pictured.

“However, social leasing schemes are notoriously difficult to implement and culling it makes sense in the current environment.”

Reflecting on other details in Hipkins’ policy “reprioritisation” announcement, Crawford adds the MIA supports the government taking a staged approach to light rail in Auckland. 

“In terms of speed reductions, the broad application of lower speeds is, in our view, a perverse way to address road safety,” he continues. 

“Targeting the most at-risk roads is at the heart of the safe system approach, not blanket speed reductions.”