Flogging a dead horse, but there is a mistake here. You have three months to transfer ownership registration of a car you already own to a new state where you have moved to that state with the car. This doen’t involve a sale. If you buy a car registered in WA you have 14 days to transfer the registration. Page Not Found (404) Again this is due to the legal responsibility laws. The states require that they know who is legally responsible for a car. If you don’t notify change of ownership, the previous owner remains legally respopnsible. The seller is required to notify the WA department within 7 days that the car is sold, and the buyer must apply for change of ownership within 14 days. The forms for both the seller and buyer notification contain the addresses of both buyer and seller, an explicit yes/no for “is the car garaged in WA” and are signed by both parties. The seller sends his copy in seperately to the buyer. If you buy a car that is registered in WA, they will have notification that you have it in a week, and with your signature. Short of overt fraud, there is no wiggle room here. You have 14 days, and you are decalaring that the car is garaged in WA.
Well tell that to all the rental car companies, trucks and buses that are WA registered but never go back to WA. They are rented in Sydney or do east coast runs.
This is getting way off track. But there is no contradiction here. I was talking about the law as it applies to ordinary citizens. A car must be registered in the name of a legal entity. That is either a person, or an incorporated body. If the car is registered to an ordinary person the licensing departments assume that the car is driven by that person and is used for day to day travel. Thus they expect that garaging is done essentially at the same address as where the owner lives. If the licensing entity is an incorporated body - i.e. a company, they want to know the address of that entity. This is because that entity is legally responsible for the car. So, if you are a trucking company or car rental company, you must register the car in the state where your company is incorporated. It doesn’t matter where the car or truck goes, the state wants to know where to go looking when there are fines to be paid, infringment notices to be served, and possibly worse issues of legal responsibility. A WA trucking company that has trucks trundling about in NSW is legally required to register them in WA. If it turns out that there is a financial advantage to registering in WA, a national trucking company, or car rental company can incorporate a subsiduary in WA, and have them buy and register the cars. This is still fine. The point is that the legal entity that is responsible for the vehicle is located in WA. A car rental company that is incorporated in NSW must register them in NSW. Simple.
The same is true for any other state. The bottom line is that it is where the person or entity responsible for the car resides that determines what state it is registered in. If you are a private person you must register your car in the state you live in. Simple. No wiggle room. Serious problems if you don’t and you have an accident, especially an accident where someone is injured.
can you provide a cite where an insurance company refused to provide coverage to a backpacker travelling around Australia because of them not being a resident of the state of rego? I’ve never heard of that happening, and yes I know people that have had accidents while backpacking in vehicles as I’ve described. Their insurance paid out.
There’s an entire industry built around buying and selling backpacker cars with out of state rego and I’ve never heard of any problems making claims.
Try to get one of the last of the V-8 Interceptors.
No. Simply because that isn’t what I said. I never suggested that an insurance company would refuse to provide coverage. That is 2nd party property. The insurance company would have no doubt about who it was providing coverge to, and in general would see no problem in paying out either. Mostly because simple claims are a production line affair with a simple set of rules for checking the claim. See below for the “getting away with it” issue.
I’m sure they did pay out. For accident damage to the car, or another vehicle. That isn’t what I said.
Your standard car insurance does not cover injury, and most certainly not injury to 3rd parties. Which includes your passengers. That is covered by the compulsory 3rd party insurance. In at least WA and SA this is provided by a state owned insurance company. The problem you have is this. Fraudulently register a car in WA, have an accident where someone is seriously injured or killed in NSW. The payout, which can include anything up to lifetime care for paralysed victims at many many millions, is paid by the WA government insurance company. However the registration was fruadulent. The insurance company can come after you to recover the money. And if they decide to, they will win. About the only reason they won’t bother is because you are too poor, and even after they have taken everything you have, there isn’t really enough money to make it worth their while. Unless they decide to make an example of you. Insurance companies are not nice when serious money is involved.
There are two scenarios. The car was legally registerd in WA, and sold by an ex WA resident, in NSW. The car is currently registered in WA, and the legally responsible person is the seller. Sale of the car does not affect the 3rd party insurance. The car remains insured for 3rd party. The buyer is a tourist from overseas, or a NSW local who wants to avoid paperwork. They transfer the WA registration to their name. In order to do so they must commit fraud. (And someone in WA will need to present this application on thier behalf, probably commiting a further fraud.) They must provide a fraudulent address in WA. If they get caught by a speed camera, or red light camera in NSW, the fine will go to this address. As will the summons for the unpaid fine. About the time they don’t appear to address the summons, the car will appear on the computer system for the NSW police. Get pulled over by the police for anything, and things will get really bad really quick.
The car will eventually need to have its registration renewed. So you can do this on-line. That also requires a fraud. You fraudulently confim the ficticious address. In WA the registration is also the contract for 3rd party insurance. Great. You have just deliberatly lied on your application for insurance. The status of your compulsory 3rd party might be a bit suspect now. This could get really bad. With a serious injury resulting from an accident that you are at fault for, any claims might legitimatly be denied. This leaves the injured person little choice but to sue you. Even if the insurance company decides to allow the claim, they will now almost certainly attempt to recover the costs from you. Note, with an injury, it isn’t you that makes the claim. It is the injured person. If you are at fault, 3rd party doesn’t even cover your injuries.
Again, I’m not talking about 2nd party property. Although if the claim was really big, (like you hit a Ferrari and wrote it off) you might find the insurance company’s lawyers looking pretty hard at the circumstances, and they very well may decide to disallow the claim. It is pretty simpe. If you break the law you are not covered. Something that catches a few people out. Have a bad accident whilst speeding, or you blow over the limit. No insurance. Fraudulent registration might be at the low end of breaking the law, but you can bet that if there was big money involved in the claim, someone inside the insurance company would be looking at all the angles.
A bunch of tourists buying and selling clapped out old cars and vans to other tourists hardly constitutes an industry. And certainly doesn’t make what they do legal.
This also falls foul of a critical adage that petty fraudsters always get wrong. They think that if they got the money, or got the paperwork through, they “got away with it.” They get a very rude shock when an audit sometime in the next year or so throws up the fraud, and the thing they “got away with” comes back with a vengance.
ok, so lets see a cite where a state owned insurance agency refused to pay a 3rd party personal injury pay in these circumstances? If the WA government allows this to happen (turns a blind eye) and also owns the third party insurance company then maybe it’s because it’s a net benefit to their state to get the extra revenue from out of state car rego?
So should NSW declare war on WA over this?
It is extremely unlikey that one could ever find a cite for such a thing. Such issues are private and negotiated between the insurer and the claiment. They don’t publicise these things. You won’t find them in the papers, and you could ring up the insurer and ask, and they will simply say that they won’t tell you. OTOH it is quite clear that they have every legal right to deny these claims, and the right to sue a person that fraudulently registered a car if they did pay. Feeling lucky?
Seriously, there is ample evidence that fraudulent registration of a car leaves you open to a very large range of risks. For a starter is it illegal. It is very unlikey that the WA government turn a blind eye to this, as they carry a significant risk, and 3rd party insurance is much more expensive in the Eastern states. WA price is about $250, QLD about $350, NSW - $450 to over $600. The WA government is essentially taking the additional risk of 3rd party insurance in NSW at a very much lower price. This is hardly something to turn a blind eye to because they are making money. Quite the opposite.
A Backpacker who bought insurance while over here and refused to have his claim covered would have a very good reason to publicise it, but I bet you can’t find any such stories.
Specifically in the OP’s case or any other backpacker who is travelling Australia there is nothing fraudulent in buying a car with ANY state’s rego. Which state are they legally required to rego it in if they don’t have a fixed address while travelling here?
You keep missing the point about insurance. It isn’t his claim. 3rd party insurance does not just cover claims by the registrant. It covers claims by other people injured where the registrant was the at fault driver. This has nothing to do with accident damage to vehicles. A property damage denial of coverage could occur, but likely only if the damage was extraordinarly expensive, and the insurance company decided to start digging. You are also assuming that the notional backbacker will be happy to publicise the fact that he was overtly breaking the law and got pinged. Backpackers that don’t fraudulently register cars are fine. Most travellers establish an address for contact. Possibly a hostel. If there is a reasonable expectation that the backpacker can be contacted via this address it may suffice. As I wrote above. States want to know where the fines and sumonses will go.
This presents a rather intersting question. Perhaps you can provide the answer to this? WA transfer of registration requires that the buyer present original proof of identify in person in WA. There is a get out clause where an appointed agent can present this doumentation for them. So, how does your notional backpacker transfer registration of a WA registered vehicle that they buy in NSW? It isn’t possible to do it on the internet. They have 14 days, and the documentation (which must be the origional of a driver’s licence or passport) must be physically presented in WA. Cite?
An appointed agent is an interesting possibility. This suggests that there is an underground mechanism where someone is offering a service to backpackers to transfer the registration in WA for them. Such a person is commiting a pretty serious crime. The sort of crime that is likely to attract a small holiday at the government’s expense.
The only reasonable answer to registration is that the car must be registered in the state in which it is purchased, or the buyer travels to the state in which it is to be registered and transfers registration within 14 days (or whatever period that state allows.)
In the end it seems to boil down to this. Everyone agrees that the WA registration thing is illegal. You assert that it is rife anyway. But this is the old “sure it is illegal, but no-one ever gets caught, so why worry?” argument.
because the evidence is that WA doesn’t want anyone to get caught. They could easily put a stop to this by asking for physical inspections of the vehicles like other states do. If they make a net gain by providing coverage to out of state vehicles its not in their interest to deny coverage.
There are legal ways for a backpacker to transfer rego of a WA vehicle, eg a WA address that forwards mail for them, if they have no other fixed residential address that’s valid. This is essentially equivalent to what a transport corporation does which sets up a mailbox in WA and legally incorporates there even though the vast majority of their business is on the east coast.
Indeed they could ask for inspections. SA doesn’t have inspections either. The reason isn’t about gaining a microscopic bit of additional licensing revenue and then taking a loss due to the vastly cheaper 3rd party fees. (You insist that WA does this because they make money, yet the state owned insurance company will be losing much more money that the registration fees are worth.) States have resisted compulsory inspections because it creates a large voter backlash amongst the poorer population. Many cars cease to pass inspection, and these are owned by the poorer people. So it is good legistation that casues poor people a significant financial hardship, and hardly touches richer people. If you are a Labour government this is not generally considered a good idea. Which is a huge pity.
Not quite. You are missing the bit about legaly incorporating. A backpacker can’t easily create a corporation. Anyway, you have failed to describe the mechanism by which this registration occurs. The bit about physically presenting the documentation. Maybe there is an overt system where someone is providing all the infrastructure to register in WA. If you go to the Kings Cross car market is there a little booth with some guy offering this service to just off the plane tourists? It isn’t exactly a trivial thing to do for someone who has just arrived in the country and has little idea about the system. If there was a little booth, the guy running it, and especially his co-conspiritor in WA - who will be presenting the documentation to the motor vheichles department in WA, are risking serious legal problems. Not only that, if you were a tourist, and some guy in a tent said that if you give him your passport for a few days he can arrange cheap registration, exactly what would you think?
Perhaps you could describe exactly how this system actually works?
go to kings cross and ask them yourself.
You can give your residential address as c/o any Post Office. There is no requirement to lodge the form in person. I’m not sure about the garaging part. It’s not really garaged anywhere when you are on holiday.
The thing is, if the OP buys a $10,000 car (Say, a 2001 AU Falcon), they then have to try and sell it when they leave. If they get lucky, someone will buy it right away. More likely, they’ll have to sell it to a dealer, maybe get $2,000 or $3,000 for it, and be out of pocket $7,000.
And a $1000 car- assuming you can get one capable of driving from Sydney to Cairns reliably- is highly unlikely to have airconditioning or a CD player in it.
You do not want to drive any appreciable distance in Australia- especially not in QLD- without air conditioning. And unless you buy some sort of FM transmitter that actually works for your MP3 player, it’s going to be a very dull drive without music.
On the other hand, you can just rent a car, get a nice new vehicle with all the mod cons, all the registration, maintenance, and insurance hassles are someone else’s problem, and all you have to do is fill it with petrol and maybe top up the wiper fluid every now and then.
Why? It is you that asserts it is both possible and rife. I don’t live in NSW. I therefore assume you actually don’t know. Or more likely that it isn’t actually done.
Not true for WA transfer of registration. The form must be physically lodged by a human being. The human can be the buyer, or their appointed agent (usually the car dealer.). But a human must be present in WA to do the transfer. And they must have originals of the identity documentation for the new owner. Either a driver’s license or a passport. This is not the same as registration renewal. The WA form specifically requires that you assert that the car is garaged in WA. In fact there are two boxes - one for “yes” - one for “no”. Next to them is a note - if you tick “no” you can’t transfer the registration. In other words they are making it absolutely explicit that you knew exactly if you were making a false application.
I don’t know the precise details but I assure you it’s frequently done, check out the Gumtree listings for yourself. Your assertion that it’s fraud or illegal is pretty meaningless if you can’t point to any actual examples of people getting in trouble for this.
You don’t know and don’t live in NSW so you assume he doesn’t know? How does that work? I don’t know about Sydney/Cairns but from travelling in UK/Europe I know that exactly this sort of traveller’s car market does occur at regular traveller locations. I think it is inherently plausible.
Where are you getting your information from? I know nothing of this subject but a quick google finds this brochure. From the brochure I note that merely posting the requisite forms is not only possible but expected. The brochure says that buyers “can also” attend in person but this is clearly only optional. After the transfer etc forms have been posted in the buyer is notified of the fee, and there are explicit arrangements in place for paying this over the phone. As to proof of identity, the brochure explicitly permits this to be done by way of sending certified copies and advises against sending originals.
False.
What the formsays is that “garaged” means the place the vehicle is kept when not in use and that vehicles cannot be licensed in Western Australia if they are garaged in another State or Territory. The form does not require that you assert that the car is garaged in WA, it asks: “Is the vehicle garaged in another State or Territory?” And the answers are entirely the opposite way around to what you say: it is if you answer “yes” that you cannot register the vehicle in WA.
A tourist would never have the vehicle not in use, so it is not garaged anywhere, so it is entirely correct to answer the question “no” which means the vehicle can be registered in WA.
Further, the transfer form requires a garaging address but if you read the explanatory note, it says merely that vehicles cannot be licensed in Western Australia if they are garaged in another state, per s17(2) of the WA Road Traffic Act.
And if you check that Act you will find that the geographical requirements for registration of a vehicle in WA are that the vehicle is kept primarily in WA or the vehicle is not kept primarily in any State or Territory.
So you would be quite within your rights to fill in the garaging address as “none” and it would be acceptable to register the vehicle in WA.
If you are going to make detailed and vociferous assertions in GQ, you could at least make some effort to get it right.
I’ve certainly seen ads at uni and in Asian Mini-Mart type places in QLD (especially in “tourist areas” like the Gold Coast) for older cars being sold cheap because the owner is going overseas; I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that some of them (especially station wagons and vans) might be “backpacker/surfie” cars for the sort of market Princhester talks about.
Having said that, my advice to the OP is still to just rent a car unless they’re going to be here for several months.
thats vehicles listed as “wa rego” being sold in Sydney, thanks to Princhester for filling in the details, it’s my understanding that for a backpacker with no permanent residency in any state for more than 3 months it is perfectly legal to transfer it into your name and leave it as WA rego EVEN if you never go to WA.
Yes for someone living in another state it’s illegal to buy a WA car and not transfer it’s rego, that doesn’t apply to travellers because of the wording which WA uses (eg must not be garaged in another state)