2020 has unfolded for many Australians with devastating challenges and yet inspirational resilience and a compassionate spirit of mateship. Whatever your experience and situation, my best wishes to each of you for the coming year. May it be one of personal achievement and business success.
I returned early from the festive season break to prepare for the year ahead. The quiet time allowed me, as one of a panel of four interviewing applicants for the Queensland Overseas Foundation (QOF) scholarship, to do the necessary reading and to further develop our Membership Engagement Strategy. MTA Queensland is on QOF’s board of directors, represented by Group Chief Executive Officer Dr Brett Dale. The scholarship is open to trainees, apprentices and vocational education and training graduates up to 30 years of age and provides an opportunity for international travel and work in their chosen vocation for two years. It provides $7,500 towards achieving experience in emerging technologies and to bring back the knowledge to the Australian/Queensland market.
The calibre of the eight young people presenting for the interviews was of a high standard which provides confidence for the future of the industries they represented. One of the applicants was 2019 Apprentice of the Year finalist Bayley Locker, who is a 4th year heavy vehicle apprentice from Toowoomba.
It is important to note that this scholarship is separate from the Queensland Automotive Trades QOF Scholarship. It derives from a partnership that QOF has with the Association, Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia, Institute of Automotive Mechanical Engineers and Construction & Mining Equipment Industry Group to offer the Queensland Automotive Trades Scholarship to graduates in the Queensland automotive industry. In 2019, the MTA Queensland Apprentice of the Year Elliott Lemmon was the recipient of that scholarship. Applications for the 2020 scholarship are now open and accessible from the QOF website.
Member Engagement
Key Strategy 1 of the Association’s 2019-21 Strategic Plan is ‘Service Excellence’, having its focus on members and clients as the core of the organisation. For this calendar year the emphasis will be on promoting member businesses in MTA Queensland’s Motor Trader e-magazine and on our website. In the coming days, my staff and I will be calling members to speak about this opportunity which will continue until we fill 100 member profiles to spread across the calendar year.
Motor Trader is a substantial magazine having a reach well beyond its 8,000 subscribers. It is an effective voice for the motor trades and, in its 87th year of publication is one of the oldest trade magazines in the nation. The Association’s website has a strong following with 95,400 users for the 2018/19 FY.
The offer, as part of membership, is a free business profile article in the magazine. This is done via a simple online form and uploading one or two quality photos. For the Association’s website, our marketing team will add the content and post it to Facebook which has over 4,500 followers. There are 11 Motor Trader editions published over the 2020 year, which means the profile will be in one of these. The marketing team will advise by email when it is published.
I look forward to member engagement in this strategy, particularly as one of the learnings as a provider of the Australian Government’s Small Business Digital Champions project is that some proprietors are time poor or with limited resources. This offer for a member’s business to be profiled in Motor Trader and content posted on one of the Association’s social media sites is aimed at promoting the business and the trade. Feedback suggests the concept already has strong support from members and we look forward to rolling it out over the year.
Advocacy
There’s been a focus on the preparation of the Association’s pre-budget priorities submission to the Queensland Treasury as it drafts the 2020-21 state budget. The submission is on the website for members to peruse. A second submission relates to ‘Enhancement to Unfair Contract Term Practices’. It is a consultation regulation impact statement (RIS) which relates to the review of the extension of the Unfair Contract Term (UCT) regime for small businesses within two years of commencement.
Industry Issues
The recall of motor vehicles fitted with Takata airbags continues to be an ongoing issue. Now, vehicles manufactured between 1996 and 2000, due to a serious safety concern relating to faulty airbags, are being voluntarily recalled. In all, there are now eight manufacturers which have issued recalls in relation to defect airbags, amounting to 78,000 vehicles. Importantly, these manufacturers will buy back vehicles fitted with the defect airbags – vehicles that were not part of existing airbag recalls. In a conversation with the Chair of the Remarketing Division Peter Dever, he told of the incident where the owner of 1998 BMW was subject to the recall and was genuinely surprised at the manufacturer’s expedient management of the recall, the buyback and the more than fair price received.
Whilst it is appearing that defective Takata airbags fitted in motor vehicles has been problematic for more than 20 years, it only became a significant issue from February 2018 in Australia. It was then that the Australian Government announced the compulsory recall of all cars fitted with Takata airbags – about 2.3 million vehicles. Since then the number has grown exponentially. In September 2019, a total of 3.4 million defective airbags had been replaced with another 400,000 yet to be changed. In Queensland, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, there has been 711,000 replacements with a further 71,000 to be processed.
Another issue that has been a concern for our Australian Automotive Dealer membership is the collapse in new motor vehicle sales. For the 2019 calendar year, new vehicle sales fell 7.8 per cent over the previous year to record the lowest annual sales result in eight years. VFACTs data indicate that 1,062,867 new vehicles were recorded as sold in 2019 and December marked the 21st consecutive monthly decline. The latest forecast from the Commonwealth Bank’s household spending index shows early signs of the ‘worth effect’ from an improving housing market, supporting spending on motor vehicles. That is from a low level, but it is a positive outlook to start the new year.
Another positive for the automotive value chain is highlighted in a new Commonwealth Department of Industry report. It reveals that close to 75 per cent of former supply chain companies have remained in business following the closure in 2016 and 2017 of the car manufacturing plants.
Finally
In the coming weeks, my staff and I will be engaging with members individually about the free promotional offer for their enterprise to be featured in Motor Trader, on the website, and content posted on social media.
An important focus over the coming month or so will be the several industry division meetings that occur quarterly. I attend each of these and the corporate office provides the necessary support services.
Until March, take care and stay safe.
Source: Motor Trader E-Magazine (Feb 2020)
5 Feb 2020