Australia’s general insurers have told Treasury that the country’s Right to Repair scheme will not ease the repair costs feeding into motor premiums unless it is expanded to force vehicle manufacturers to sell parts, and to stop them using software to disable components fitted outside authorised networks. The intervention moves a long-running competition debate onto territory that bears directly on underwriting and claims: the cost and availability of vehicle repairs, and increasingly the repair of electric vehicles.
The Motor Vehicle Service and Repair Information Sharing Scheme (MVIS), which commenced on July 1, 2022, under Part IVE of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, requires manufacturers to make diagnostic and repair information available to independent repairers at no more than fair market value. A 2025 Treasury review found the scheme had been associated with a $2.4 billion annual increase in automotive industry turnover, alongside greater consumer choice. Treasury is now consulting on refining the scheme and extending it to agricultural machinery, with submissions having closed on July 3, 2026.
The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), whose members authorise more than 1.4 million vehicle repairs a year, argues the scheme has a structural gap. A repair needs three inputs – information, parts, and the ability to make a part function in the vehicle – but the MVIS mandates only the first. Where a manufacturer confines the sale of parts to its own dealer network or uses software to stop a correctly fitted part from operating until it is digitally “paired” by an authorised agent, the restriction moves from information to parts, with the same effect: fewer repairers competing, longer repair times, and higher prices.
The submission cites one manufacturer it says restricts parts to a small authorised network, so that a customer without a nearby authorised repairer must send the vehicle across a city, or from a rural area into a metropolitan centre, to have it repaired. The same manufacturer, it says, will sell the part directly to the vehicle owner while refusing the owner’s or insurer’s chosen repairer – behaviour that the ICA frames as channel control rather than a safety or quality measure. An ICA spokesperson has said the practice involves one popular electric vehicle brand and is increasingly being adopted by new market entrants, while stopping short of naming brands; state repair bodies have separately identified Tesla, whose non-authorised workshops cannot order spare parts directly and whose customers must order the parts themselves. Tesla declined to comment when approached by motoring outlet Drive.
The commercial logic runs through claims costs. Comprehensive motor premiums rose 42% between 2019 and 2024 to an average of $1,052, tracking a 42% rise in average claims costs over the same period, according to the ICA’s March 2025 Motor Insurance Policy Paper. Repair costs alone climbed 26% since 2022 and now account for around 60% of total claim costs, while the motor claims-to-premium ratio moved from 89% in mid-2019 to 94% by mid-2024 – a squeeze on underwriting margins even as premiums rose. In the same paper, the ICA noted that vehicles are declared total losses when repair costs exceed insured value, and that rising repair costs, longer wait times, and added expenses such as rental cars are pushing insurers toward writing vehicles off rather than repairing them.
The parts question is sharpening as the fleet electrifies. Battery-electric vehicles accounted for 11.8% of new vehicle registrations in February 2026, according to Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries and Electric Vehicle Council data. Repair capacity has not kept pace: NRMA Insurance research found only around 10% of local technicians were certified to repair EVs in 2023, and the ICA attributes about 60% of claims-related expenses to labour and parts – the area where EVs reliably cost more. Choice analysis of more than 16,000 quotes collected in January 2026 found EV owners pay around 40% more than petrol owners on average, with limited repair networks and overseas parts sourcing among the drivers. Restricting parts to authorised networks compounds each of those pressures for exactly the vehicle class growing fastest in the fleet.
The ICA recommends three steps, two of which it says fit within the scheme’s existing architecture: confirming that parts-pairing and activation information is scheme information; prohibiting pairing practices that stop a correctly fitted part from working unless done through an authorised network; and requiring manufacturers to supply original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts to independent repairers on fair and reasonable commercial terms. “You can’t have a real Right to Repair while manufacturers can hold the parts hostage,” ICA CEO Andrew Hall said. He added: “When parts are locked away, repairs cost more, take longer, and good cars get written off for no good reason. As a result, the premiums of hard-working Australians go up.”
The scheme is enforced by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). In September 2024 the ACCC issued Honda Australia its first infringement notice under the MVIS, which Honda paid at $18,780, over allegations it offered diagnostic software only on a yearly subscription rather than the cheaper daily or monthly options the scheme requires; the regulator has warned certain contraventions can attract penalties of up to $10 million each.
The ICA is not alone on parts. The Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association (AAAA), which lobbied for the original law, has told Treasury the scheme’s success depends not simply on information being available but on independent repairers being able to access and use it in practice, and supports extending the scheme to agricultural machinery and vehicles up to 4.5 tonnes. Vehicle manufacturers have historically resisted mandated parts supply: in submissions to the Productivity Commission’s Right to Repair inquiry, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) argued that authorised repairers use genuine parts where available, that this supports residual value and keeps vehicles compliant with the Australian Design Rules, and that existing restrictive-trade-practices provisions are adequate to address anti-competitive conduct. The chamber’s position on the current consultation was not publicly available at the time of writing.
The parts-pairing mechanism targeted by the ICA is already being addressed in overseas right-to-repair laws. Several US states have introduced measures limiting the practice, including Colorado, whose Consumer Right to Repair Act prohibits manufacturers from using parts pairing to prevent or degrade the use of replacement parts in covered digital electronic equipment manufactured and sold or first used in the state from Jan. 1, 2026. Motor vehicles are excluded from Colorado’s law.
Whether parts access is added is now a matter for Treasury, and because it sits outside the scheme’s current information-sharing scope, any change would require further amendment to the Competition and Consumer Act. For insurers, the outcome bears on the largest controllable input in a motor claim.
