THERE is little doubt agricultural machinery plays a crucial role in modern farming and demands a significant financial investment from farmers.
It has an important role on many farms, right through from sowing to harvest, to the ever expanding reliance on machinery in rotary dairies and automated egg grading production systems for example.
However, buyers of agricultural machinery don't share the same consumer rights in comparison to many similar industries when it comes to machinery maintenance and repair.
For comparison, when buying a car the purchaser can choose freely where to service and repair their vehicles in the event something goes wrong. This isn't the case for agricultural machinery.
Whilst many individual dealers and manufacturers provide excellent products and service, there remain very few avenues of recourse for consumers in the event something goes wrong.
This is why the VFF strongly supports the need for greater competition and consumer protections within the agricultural machinery after-sales market.
That is why we are calling for the Australian Consumer Guarantee to be amended to include agricultural machinery.
It makes sense that agricultural machinery warranties be prohibited from permitting only authorised dealers to conduct after-market services.
As an industry, we understand that dealerships have invested significant funds into training, parts, tools and equipment and they deserve to have a return on that investment.
However, this should not be a reason to limit competition. In fact, removing these restrictions will reward the best dealers and repairers.
It's clear that a 'right to repair' needs be created to remove restrictions to allow the owner of the machinery, to make their own choices when it comes who services and repairs agricultural machinery, and when you buy the machinery, you must have access to the software for fault codes and programming.