The Fight to Repair.

ENVIRONMENT / ISSUE 5

The government may not care, but our communities want to repair instead of buying new.

2024 was a hopeful year for the Right to Repair in New Zealand. April saw Marama Davidson’s Right to Repair Amendment Bill being pulled from the biscuit tin, ushering in a buzz of excitement from proponents of repairability. 

That buzz continued, albeit with growing scepticism, into 2025. In April, the Bill passed its first reading with the support of Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Maori, and conditional support from NZ First. This milestone sent the bill forward to select committee where 1,250 submissions were made. Of these submissions, 95% supported the Bill, with fewer than 2% opposing it.

Unfortunately, despite overwhelming public support, the Bill failed. Although the committee spent considerable time exploring and drafting changes to the Bill to resolve the concerns of the government, NZ First pulled its support in August. Winston Peters cited the Bill’s “unworkability and cost” when withdrawing his party. Matters got only more embarrassing. In October, when the Speaker of the House initiated the Bill’s second reading, Marama Davidson—the sponsor of the Bill—was not seated when it was called upon. Showing up all of 20 seconds too late, her absence resulted in the Bill being discharged. Davidson attempted to have it reinstated, but this motion was blocked by government MPs.

However, the fight to repair continues. To kick off 2026 in more positive spirits, I joined the Cashmere Repair Café, one of the communities that make up the grassroots of the right to repair movement in Ōtautahi, for their first session of the year.

Here I spoke to a range of voices, each attending for their own reasons. For some, as repairers, it was the technical challenge and the thrill of the chase they get during a repair, while for others the café was a community or a space with access to tools and skillsets they didn’t have. No matter why there were here, they were united in their support for the right to repair. 

A big topic of discussion was the increasing difficulty of repairing, how products are getting progressively more complicated to repair. One attendee spoke of a woman who brought in two broken toasters, one was decades old while the other, only a couple years old, both similarly non-functioning. With the older toaster, repairers at the café quickly took it apart, diagnosed and fixed the issue, preparing it for what could be decades more of making toast. Whereas, with the other toaster, only a few years old, they couldn’t even get into it. This example perfectly illustrated the common difficulties of modern electronics, and why communities like these really are fighting an uphill battle. You can’t fix a toaster if you’re not even able to open it. These days manufacturers of everything from cars to coffee machines prefer to use “seamless” plastic clips as opposed to screws. Some might say in the pursuit of a streamlined aesthetic, but mechanics and repairmen see these changes differently: it’s manufactured non-repairability disguised as ‘modern design’. 

Another regular talked about how the monthly event allowed her to set aside dedicated time to repair, to sit down with a needle and thread and fix up old clothing. The members of this welcoming environment, with a rich pool of shared knowledge, are able to help out if the repair proves too difficult for her hand sewing alone. At repair café’s like Cashmere, there’s a broad skillset at hand. There are people good at sewing, sharping blades, computer repairers, or just general ‘engineers’ that’ll have a crack at nearly any challenge from appliances to toys—I’m not kidding, they once fixed up a toy monkey like the one from Toy Story. 

So, whatever you’ve got that’s broken and might need fixing, before you toss it, have a think about whether you can repair it, and if you can’t there might just be someone at a repair café waiting to fix it for you. And if you consider yourself a tinkerer or a maker, or maybe you just have a very particular set of skills, consider going along to your local repair café and seeing if there’s anything you can do to help out.

The odds may be against us, and there’s little we can do to hold corporations to account for their lack of repairability, but we can make an effort to keep our items working for longer  while fostering a welcoming, people-powered community to fight unsustainable consumerism. Remember we vote with our wallets, not only can we save money by repairing over replacing, maybe companies will take the hint that the status quo isn’t working for anyone, people or planet.