Thread: Buying an interstate Vehicle - cautionary tale

I live in NSW. In feb this year I bought a vehicle in SA. It was SA registered (until Aug2011) and looked in quite good condition. Drives well. In July I thought it was about time to get a blue slip. For those that aren't familiar with NSW process this is a roadworthy inspection that is done by a certain small group of authorised people when a vehicle has run out of registration and needs to be re registered from scratch or when a vehicle from interstate needs to be transferred to NSW rego.
The Blue-slip inspection found a couple of things - nothing major (oil leak, a couple of suspension bushes) so this was done - no probs. I got my blue-slip and went to the registry office and, as they punched in the car's details, up popped a box saying that this vehicle was on the "Written off vehicles register" (WOVR). It had been put on that register in early 2007 as a "repairable write-off". It had then been reregistered in SA in late 2007 after, apparently, being inspected and cleared by SA authorities as roadworthy.
The gentleman at the registry pointed to the box on the blue-slip form that needs to be filled in for written-off vehicles. It allows the inspector to examine the various parts of the car in question and note that they are compliant if they are . When I got back to the inspection station the inspector informed me that as of 1/8/2011 he was not longer permitted to fill in that art of the form and that I needed to call the RTA's customer service line.
At this stage I am getting frustrated. No matter how much I point out that the vehicle has passed all inspections and is considered roadworthy in SA and by the Blue-slip inspector the fact is that the new rules state that if a car is on the national written off vehicles register then it wont be reregistered.
This rule is designed to stop rebirthing of vehicles but due to a combination of factors I got caught up in this.
The RTA call centre said I had two options, either get SA to remove the vehicle from the register or track down the repairer and get them to issue a certificate of compliance for the vehicle then take the vehicle 400km to newcastle for a Vehicle Identification inspection. There was virtually no way that the repairer could be tracked down. The vehicle has changed hands twice (at least) and it could have been repaired by a private person (the write-off was not due to an accident). I would have had to employ a private investigator. The person advising me reckoned that getting the SA dept to change the register was the easiest approach.
I then contacted the SA DTEI and got put through to the relevant section. It was then pointed out to me that the National WOVR cannot be maintained. Entries simply flow through to it from the various state registers and whether a car is repaired or not seems to be irrelevant - once it is written off it stays on the register and there is nothing that anyone can do to actually remove it from the register. According to the SA people, in the past when a situation like this arose, the NSW RTA simply sent an email to the appropriate person who then sent back an OK that the vehicle had been determined to be roadworthy and the vehicle could then be registered. I then re-contacted the NSW RTA and pointed out what the SA person had said - that it couldnt be removed from the register, that there was a process for handling this situation. It was then pointed out by the RTA that an email wouldnt help. The system was linked to the WOVR and it would keep popping up and blocking the rego. This has now taken a day of phone calls to govt depts in NSW and SA.
I should mention that everyone is trying to be helpful and no one is being difficult or obstructive - it is simply that the system hasnt been designed for this situation.
So, I recontact the SA DETI. The gentleman who looks after the WOVR in SA offers to contact his NSW equivalent. He does this the next day and it seems they come to an agreement that SA dig out the physical documents of the inspection that was done in 2007 to pass the vehicle as roadworthy and send those to the NSW RTA who will then review these documents and determine if they are acceptable.
This part of the process takes a few days but eventually the documents are found and passed to the NSW RTA who in turn contact me and tell me that I can now register the vehicle and that all I need to do is get a new Blue-slip document ( the original one had run out- my fault not theirs).
This I have now done and on Monday I will get the vehicle registered in the jurisdiction of NSW.
Anyway, the moral of all this is that you should not only get a check on the "REVS" register in the state where the vehicle is currently registered but you should also contact that state's WOVR person and find out if the vehicle is on the WOVR. If it is then you need to determine if the relevant inspections have been done.
Note that if SA had not been able to track down the inspection documents then I would have been up the proverbial creek without a paddle with the distinct possibility that the vehicle would not have been registered in NSW and that it have to have been disposed of for parts or sold to a jurisdiction that would have registered it (eg SA)

one nation, one road authority, one police department. one set of laws for the country. not 7