Page 1741 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 6 June 2006
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MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for the Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Housing and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (11.42), in reply: The Road Transport Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 provides for the introduction of non-transferable taxi licences, simplification of provisions for taxi networks so that there is one kind rather than several kinds of taxi network accreditation, and the transfer from regulation to primary legislation of enter-and-search powers available to officers inspecting premises of public passenger service operators and approved vehicle inspectors.
I would like Hansard to note that Dr Foskey asked a number of questions about the taxi system and has promptly taken herself out of the chamber. I encourage Dr Foskey, if she is not going to be in the chamber to listen to debates, to have a look at the Hansard and maybe respond. I take it back; she has returned.
The government needs flexibility to introduce different types of taxi licences from time to time. The legislative amendments I am introducing today are designed to provide a more flexible regime within which governments can issue taxi licences. The process for releasing short-term, leased taxi licences by ballot was announced earlier this year, and the first ballot of 10 such licences was held in April 2006. These were transferable licences as currently required in the legislation. In other words, we did not have any choice. I had no intention of doing that, but we did not have any choice because of what the legislation made us do about the transferability.
Transferability of taxi licences allows the licences to be subleased to another person or transferred into another person’s name. Both types of transfer can potentially result in higher costs being imposed on a taxi operator. This is what has happened with standard taxi licences and is a possibility whenever licences are transferred and when the number of licences is restricted.
Dr Foskey is quite right when she makes the point that many of the previous licence holders are absentee landlords. There are quite a number of them that do not even live in the ACT. I tell the story: I was at an establishment some time ago when I overhead such an absentee landlord or leaseholder talking to some people and bemoaning the fact that, at $25,000 a lease fee per year, she was only getting a 10 per cent return on her investment. I would not mind a 10 per cent return on $250,000 worth of investments; it would be a lovely return. That is one of the reasons why we are leasing those plates out at $20,000, not $25,000.
Introducing non-transferable taxi licences will allow for an increase in the supply of taxis without the associated potential for a market to be created in these new licences. There is a reasonable lease fee to the lessee. You do not have to pay any loading on it to somebody else that is not running it. The money that the person who is the lessee of that vehicle earns will go into the pocket of that lessee and not into the pocket of some investor.
The amendment requires that there be transferable and non-transferable licences under section 41 of the Road Transport (Public Passenger Services) Act 2001. It will allow the government to release non-transferable lease licences in subsequent ballots for leased taxi licences.
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