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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 8 Hansard (26 October) . . Page.. 2093 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: You might think your friends in your caucus meeting are gullible, but the rest of us are not quite that gullible, Mr Whitecross. Dear, oh dear!

I think that members opposite ought to be asking themselves whether they really have thought through the implications of what they are trying to say. Do they believe that members' spouses ought not to be involved in any way in government activity, or employed, presumably, by the ACT Government? That follows, I assume. Do they say that members of their families should not be employed? Have members of Labor Party members' families never been employed by the ACT Government? I think they might have been. You should check on the records. I think you should find out about it. I like the point about how Mr Hird is supposed to have benefited from media exposure. Who in the last fortnight has given him more exposure than he could have earned in 12 months of politicking in the Assembly? These people opposite. Exposure is completely immaterial.

I want to turn now to the question of the taxi plates. It is quite clear that the process of auctioning taxi plates is a process of some uncertainty. If you hold an auction, I think it is inherent that you expect to see some fluctuation in the amount of money that people bid in order to acquire a taxi plate. Mr Speaker, it is true that the amount referred to in the budget papers is greater than the amount we have achieved through this auction. It is not true, however, that the Government is unhappy about that process. In fact, we believe that it is an extremely appropriate outcome. The amount referred to in the budget papers quite properly is simply a product of multiplying the number of plates to be auctioned by the amounts bid on average for plates at the auction last year.

Mr Whitecross: No, it is not. You are misleading the Assembly, Gary.

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, Mr Speaker, it is a hypothetical sum based on no more than a guess as to what a plate might fetch at an auction. We do not know in advance of the auction how much the plates are going to fetch. Mr Whitecross does not know either. Nobody would know before the auction. The question is whether it is good or bad for the purposes of public policy, and particularly for taxi users, that those prices should come down.

I refer members to an article in the Canberra Times of 17 October by Crispin Hull in which he argues that the policy of past governments of rationing the number of taxi licences, of commanding huge sums for the right to drive a taxi around this Territory, is very much inimical to public policy and has the effect of increasing the cost of taxi fares to ACT consumers and people who visit this Territory. I have to say that I agree with his points. I want to quote briefly from what he had to say. He said this:

There is nothing wrong with licensing for safety and competence to prevent mayhem being inflicted on the public, but licensing just to raise the money or to protect existing monopoly licensees smacks of Tudor arrogance.

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