Car

I bought a car on eBay yesterday.

Turns out that was the easy part. I live in New South Wales, so the whole car-owning thing is taken to heights not even dreamt of by car drivers in NZ, or even car driving regulators.

First there is the "rego". Then the forms. Then the pretty colour-coded 'slips' of various shades. And the insurance.

And of course, the money!

It appears, after only being a car owner for just under 24 hours, that car ownership in NSW is the ultimate blend of scam-encouraging, red tape binding, totally over-regulated, over-priced and over-paperworked inefficiency.

I've often bleated on about Australia's over regulation, and willingness to tax and tax until you can't feel the pain anymore, but this is the worst yet. I must have had some idea in the back of my mind that it would be this bad. That's probably why I've walked, and walked and walked and never taken the car owning step - for three years. That's a lot of walking, on some very warm days. Some very warm train rides and some very long bus rides.

And I was right. Car ownership here is a nightmare. A complex, expensive nightmare and I'm not even going to start on the all the environmental stuff. And the time wasting of sitting in traffic etc. I haven't even experienced that yet, although I did only narrowly avoid a toll road while managing to get lost while driving home from the car seller's place last night.

In the process of transferring ownership from the very nice bloke I've bought the car from, I have to have him sign his original registration document, and I sign it too. Then I take that, and another "change of ownership" form to the Road Transport people. With ID, which has to be a NSW driver licence. I have one of those. So that's three pieces of paper. Then because the car is already registered to June - although I am "re-registering" it in my name, the original rego the previous owner paid is still valid til June. And so is the "green slip" compulsory third party insurance. This is the first of three 'slips' they talk about here.

Don't forget the visit to the RTA involves taking a number like a Chinese restaurant and watching for half an hour while half the people ahead of you give up waiting and leave.

The others are a 'pink' slip which is like the warrant of fitness back home. The previous owner had one of these so I don't need to do that til June either. Then there's another colour, I can't remember which, for any modifications done to the car.

Starting to get confused yet?

As for the money, when I go to transfer the ownership, I have to pay a "stamp duty" which will be 3% of the value of the car. The previous owner told me it is standard practice to lower the agreed price, just for the form, so the new owner pays less stamp duty. Typical, I thought. But I went along with it. I will also have to pay a transfer fee. Of course. So that's at least $200. Just to change the ownership.

Then in June when it is registration time, I will have to get a pink slip from a garage, and a green slip from my insurance company. The green slip is considered to be just your average government cash-grab scam. It's also about $200 and is some kind of government funded insurance for when I run over a pedestrian. It pays the pedestrian's hospital bills. Not mine. Nice.

Finally - I think - there's ordinary old insurance. I went with comprehensive insurance and that's $850 for the year. The area we live in is considered safe so that's helped bring the price down. Usually it's $1000 or more. I also got a slight 10% discount - cos I'm a girl. Don't go thinking they went tough on me because I was a new owner/insurer - they told me they took my NZ driving and insurance history into account.

Everybody knows it's expensive to have a car. I'm not complaining about that. It's just the mind-boggling complicatedness of it all.

I can't help thinking - there must be LOTS of people who just don't bother. The more complicated and expensive the system, the more people who bail out of it altogether.

I used to work with a girl who used to say (in NZ) "your warrant of fitness is due 30 days from the day the cop stops you". And she was right. I hate to think how many people have an attitude like that here, and who could blame them!?