Dead Hand

There has recently been a bit of dialog and lots of hand wringing about the *Innovation* that is not going on in OZ. At least some of our politicians seem to have woken up to the fact that buying and selling real estate and importing bogan celebrities is not a very clever way to generate national wealth.

One area that the *dead hand* of government has stifled for decades is with personal transportation. The rules which apply to specialist vehicles vary considerably between the states. Each state government has a small cadre of self appointed "experts" who decide what is and what is not registrable. And very seldom do they speak with each other - let alone anyone who actually knows anything.

We have at least six different sets of rules across the nation and the effort required to get registration approval for unusual vehicles is usually much more trouble that it is worth. The net effect is that modern, innovative personal transportation design, development and manufacture is just too hard in this country. And that's just the way the big vehicle manufacturers and the state governments like it ;-)

I have some experience of an imported specialist vehicle that was finally registered in one state after much effort and cost. The owner then moved interstate and was lucky enough to get it registered there with a little less effort. But when he moved to a third state he had to go through the whole rigmarole again - and had to make significant and costly modifications to the vehicle. WTF?

We ain't going to get any innovation with personal transportation while this nonsense continues Virginia.

The UK has had a vibrant specialist vehicle industry for decades - it is very creative and innovative and is leading the charge toward lightweight, fuel efficient personal transportation vehicles. But we can't even bring them here - because it's the state government "experts" who decide what can be registered - and these vehicles aren't on their list. I doubt they would even know about them.

Despite a poorly performing economy, the UK specialist vehicle industry is booming and employing lots of designers, engineers and craftsmen - and continuing to produce innovative vehicles - like these.

But you won't see anything like them in OZ anytime soon.