Photo: Leonid Yastremskiy / 123rf
With the Greens' bill that would have encouraged more durable products gone, it's feared New Zealand may become the dumping ground for cheap, unrepairable goods
New Zealand risks becoming a dumping ground for cheap, unfixable goods if we don't get cracking on the type of legislation that other countries are adopting, according to Greens co-leader Marama Davidson.
She hasn't given up on her Right to Repair Amendment Bill, in spite of a select committee recommendation it proceed no further.
For an opposition members' bill, it had got pretty far.
The Detail asks why it failed in spite of a flourish of early cross-party support, and talk to Davidson about what she had hoped - and still hopes - it would achieve.
She says such a bill should be part of Aotearoa's 'fix-it' culture but there's more being done overseas to hold manufacturers accountable for the longevity of their goods.
"There's a really awesome example in France. They've got a repairability index, and so what you see now are companies having to move with that and sort of going, 'ha ha, my products are more repairable than yours' ... and it's become a positive incentive competition actually because that's consumer demand. People are looking at something that they're going to spend their precious money on and saying, 'hey, is this going to break down in 10 years? Let's have a look'. "
As examples of a change in attitude on quality products, she gives Blunt umbrellas, which provide information and parts; and La Marzocco coffee machine makers, who are training up New Zealanders to become expert repairers.
"Because we are seeing other countries move into requiring manufacture repair, what that means is that if we don't move, we could end up being the dumping ground. And we're already starting to see that happen because other countries have got these higher standards."
Davidson says there is "no such thing as a magic away place for rubbish. We've all got to be a lot more connected to the fact that ... it doesn't just disappear when the rubbish truck comes and picks up our bins every week. It goes to landfill. Tonnes and tonnes and tonnes every single year.
"This bill was a small but important part of the bigger ecosystem of minimising waste, but we really all do need to support and think about those solutions."
People clearly are thinking about it, with Davidson pointing out 95 percent of submitters to the select committee process supported the bill and its aims.
Initially, New Zealand First supported it too, which is how it got to select committee in the first place.
All members of the committee agreed on changes that basically led to a re-writing of the draft bill, including limiting the scope of it to electronic goods over $100, and giving manufacturers three years' warning of the changes.
"Every single amendment was a compromise," she says.
"[But] we thought this would pick up a lot of the things that are well-worth repairing, and a really good start to a Right to Repair Bill."
The benefits were particularly evident for rural communities which spoke to National's electoral base.
Davidson says there was constructive work going on right up until voting when Winston Peters declared it unworkable and too costly, and it was recommended it didn't go any further.
"It was absolutely disappointing that right at the last minute, it feels like it was politicked a bit, and every single government member voted against the bill that we had just done really good work on."
A second reading was due to take place this week but is likely to get pushed out, by other more urgent parliamentary business, to next month.
Newsroom senior political reporter Marc Daalder says "sometimes bills just turn out to be not workable and that's New Zealand First's argument here".
Daalder has read the select committee report that sheds light on its processes, and shares that insight with The Detail.
"The Greens and Labour say that they had to record serious concerns about the way the committee had conducted its work on the bill. They said in this case members of all parties engaged extensively with potential amendments including options that were not initiated by Marama Davidson and were not supported by all government members. Opposition members participated in this work in the reasonable expectation that such engagement was aimed at building genuine cross-party agreement.
"The result was otherwise."
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