AAAA Director of Government Relations and Advocacy, Lesley Yates, was pleased to present on the subject of the new Motor Vehicle Information Sharing Law at VASA’s recent conference

The VASA Wire and Gas Conference was a remarkable gathering of auto elec technicians, providing a wonderful opportunity to not only explore the new Motor Vehicle Information Sharing Law but also to share experiences around the initial roll out.
The Law was only one month old when the conference was held across July 29-31, but there was plenty of buzz in the air that it was live, and the data was starting to flow.
It has been an incredible feat to onboard all of the car makers that are active in Australia and to provide instructions on how to access the new Scheme to over 100,000 auto technicians.
While the Scheme is certainly not fully operational yet, the feeling of optimism and goodwill at VASA Wire and Gas most certainly offset any trepidation around whether it is actually going to work and also outweighed some initial problems technicians have experienced in accessing the registration process.
It was so great to see the industry coming together in person and the volume of noise and the number of people that were meeting each other in person for the first time was remarkable.
The VASA conference is unique, bringing together highly skilled technicians who are at the forefront of the new technology wave to talk about the generation of vehicles that will be prevalent in the decades to come.
I was encouraged by the number of VASA members who had joined the Australian Automotive Service and Repair Authority via the portal aasra.com.au
and the many others who showed interest in coming on board in the near future.
It was probably the best environment to attend in the early days of the Law, to provide a live demonstration and to seek feedback on what’s working and what is not.
There are still so many unknowns about how this Scheme will work on a daily basis, but the VASA members were positive about what is there currently, and the feedback is that whilst all of the functionality is not up and running, the information that is there is a giant leap forward from where we were, with many reporting the window into access to Technical Service Bulletins alone is worth the leap into the unknown.
We are grateful to VASA for the years of support they have shown for Mandatory Data Sharing – they were there from the beginning in 2009 and it was so rewarding to present how the law is structured, how it works and what happens if information is not provided at VASA Wire and Gas.
This all remains a work in progress, and it was clear from the feedback that the VASA community are optimistic that because we have come this far and achieved so much, we can continue to work together to live through the early difficult stages of unknowns, unexpected glitches and grey areas to make this Law work.
A full report on the VASA Conference will be included in the September issue of AAA Magazine.