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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 82 ..

Planning and Environment—Standing Committee—Report 24—Inquiry into the Road Transport (Public Passenger Services) Amendment Bill 2003, dated December 2003.

I move:

That the report be noted.

Mr Deputy Speaker, this report, concluded in December 2003, was given permission for publication and circulated out of session. This is an important landmark because it relates to the livelihoods of a number of people in business in the ACT and has direct impacts upon our strategy for public transport within the ACT.

The terms of reference for the committee inquiry were fairly wide ranging. They related in the first instance to a review of the Road Transport (Public Passenger Services) Amendment Bill. On 17 June 2003 it was referred to the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment to undertake an analysis of the bill in the context of the draft sustainable transport strategy, having regard to the role of taxis, hire cars and other small passenger vehicles in the sustainable transport strategy; the appropriate licensing and accreditation strategies to support that role; and any transitional arrangements, such as compensation, that should accompany any recommended changes to industry regulation. It was to investigate community service requirements, including disability access and the adequacy of services to parents of children under two. A substantial part of the committee’s inquiry and report relates to the road transport legislation, which is about the regulation or not of the hire car industry and the taxi industry.

When the minister announced his intention to table this bill and put it through, he said that deregulation was dead. I said at the time that deregulation would never be dead on this issue until we had done something about it. It is the view of this committee, as seen in its recommendations, that the government’s approach as proposed in the legislation is a flawed one and will not meet the needs of the people in the industry, or consumers, in the future and will not address issues of sustainability in transport.

As a result of that the committee has recommended that the government implement a buyback scheme for both hire car licence plates and taxi licence plates. We have also made recommendations about how that might be done. It could be done as an all-in-together, privately financed proposal, as has been partially adopted in Western Australia. In the case of the hire car industry, because the number of cars and the value of the licences are such, it could be done on budget for less than $3 million.

In addition to those—the most salient—recommendations, we have also made recommendations in relation to sustainable transport and the interaction between the taxi and hire car industry and the rest of the public transport industry. We have made recommendations in relation to the wheelchair-accessible taxis and where they might be best placed. We have recommended that they be removed from the administration of the taxi cooperative and be taken over by ACTION so that they can be used for their primary purpose, which is to meet the requirements of disabled people. The evidence before us, and the experience of most of the members of this place, is that disabled people often put in orders for wheelchair-accessible taxis that do not get met because the wheelchair

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