Photo: Unsplash / Lawton Cook
The campervan rental industry says updated regulations are costing them thousands of dollars and are taking standards backwards.
The new regulations will be enforced for rental vehicles from 7 December and require all campervan toilets to be fixed in place.
Rental Vehicle Association chief executive Ben McFadgen said most smaller campers had a "cassette toilet" which could previously be removed for deep cleaning.
"The problem with fixing casette toilets in a small camper is cleaning them. With the old style you could take it out, clean it properly, clean around where it is in the camper, and then put it back in," McFadgen said.
"With this new rule it's fixed so you need to clean it in situ. We believe that's going to be a problem for operators to keep them clean. They'll be using pretty strong chemicals and that makes it just that much more of a nightmare."
The managing director of rental company Mad Campers, Andy Haslett, said the process of redesigning each van to meet the new regulations was a costly exercise.
"We are having to completely redesign our existing fleet... That's coming at a cost of around about $1000 per vehicle. A lot of overtime, a lot of planning, a lot of disruption," he said.
"We have around about 50 [vans] that we've got to do, so this is a $50,000 problem for my business and we're by no means a big business. We're about half way through."
Rental companies had less than two months to upgrade the rest of their fleets before the deadline.
"We have about 7000 vehicles [throughout the sector]. We're currently sitting at around about 3000 [certified]," McFadgen said.
The rush to certify all of those vans meant corners were being cut.
"The number of certifiers has risen dramatically, there was a bit of a capacity issue earlier in the year, but a lot of these certifiers are doing it for the first time and that's part of the reason we're seeing this varied degree of quality.
"The standard of certification with this new rule is very varied. Even though we're getting these vehicles that are 'green warranted,' the standard of work within that vehicle is pretty shoddy. Some don't have an S-bend and use a garden hose instead, the water tanks aren't fixed correctly."
Standards were particularly low for vehicles traded online.
"You look on Facebook, I'm seeing two or three vehicles a day being sold that are supposedly green warranted but when you look at the photos it's really shoddy... I mean who on Earth certified them? So we're going to get flooded with a whole bunch of s***** campers out there," McFadgen said.
Haslett said he understood the rationale behind new regulations for campervans, but the government had taken the wrong approach.
"I really thought the intent of the regulations was great, I think there was a need to elevate the industry and provide a better experience," he said.
"I think the new regulations have completely missed the mark. They have effectively taken the industry backwards in terms of standards."
McFadgen said the government had ignored warnings from rental providers and enshrined the 7 December deadline in legislation so it couldn't be changed.
"The industry was saying to government right from the get go that their approach needed to be carefully thought about, the sector said this wasn't necessary and the timeline is too tight - and they ignored us," he said.
"We believe it's going to be a bit of a cluster over this peak season and when you think about the recent changes to the International Visitor Levy... The tourism sector has just been sideswiped, we're in serious trouble."
He said the rental sector had been pushed into a corner.
"They've hit us with a bunch of extra costs, money doesn't grow on trees," McFadgen said.
"Demand over the winter has been really really really low... I'm seeing quite a number of operators this year decide to close their doors, it's just getting too hard."
