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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4090 ..

There are some people who do not want to get rid of their hire car plates, but there are a significant number of people involved in the industry who no longer have an asset in a hire car plate because of the changes and the uncertainty in the industry. In many ways, it is a moribund industry; it needs to be revitalised. We need to progress quickly—and this is the message for this minister—to come up with the buyout because there are some people whose personal circumstances are such that they cannot wait until the time designated by this minister and this government, which is before 1 July 2005 and which is essentially when they will do it. 1 July 2005 is too late for some people.

The government has made up its mind that it will do this and it needs to find the resources. The minister said to me, when I raised this with him, “We didn’t want to bring forward another appropriation bill.” My response to that is: why not? We bring forward bills for supplementary appropriations on all sorts of occasions but when people’s livelihoods and people’s quality of life are depending on it and, for the sake of $2½ million tops, we cannot bring ourselves to be motivated enough to work on behalf of the community, in the best interests of individuals in our community.

I am not entirely convinced that it could not come out of the Treasurer’s Advance. I know that the opposition has made the government a bit gun-shy about the Treasurer’s Advance—and I understand that—but here is a circumstance when perhaps it could be justified and, if not, there should have been an appropriation bill. It should have been in here and debated and dealt with so that these people do not have to wait another year for their money, because having to wait another year for their money is unconscionable. The minister needs to make some commitments in here tonight before the Assembly rises about when these people will be paid out. It needs to be better than 1 July next year; it needs to be before you go into caretaker mode.

MS DUNDAS (6.23): Mr Speaker, the Democrats will be supporting this bill in principle. We will oppose some parts in the detail stage. That will be something we get to in greater detail later on.

The issue this bill seeks to address, namely the ACT taxi and hire car system, has been dragging on now for at least half a decade. We are all agreed that the ACT taxi industry needs reform and we all agree that this issue has been taking far too long to get a positive outcome. However, the fundamental stumbling block in this debate is that both this government and the former government have refused to take a broader view on the issues for both consumers and workers in the taxi industry and how taxis form part of our sustainable transport system. Instead we have seen the focus being on the whole issue of taxi plate prices rather than addressing the problems in the industry as a whole. In a sense today’s debate is a disappointing one simply because, whatever we do here today, we will not resolve the problems that face the taxi industry.

Despite continued protestations from the industry and despite the fact that the committee recommended that this bill not proceed in its current form, these complaints have effectively fallen on deaf ears. There have been calls from all sides for this issue to be approached in a more encompassing way, to look at demand responsive transport more broadly and to look at the issues of public concern more directly. This has not been done.

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