Page 1744 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 6 June 2006
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moment with Canberra Cabs about DRT, but let me tell you that their fight is with the airport, not with the government.
I want to talk about some of the things that Mr Pratt said. He talked about those standards of fines. I will be introducing the fines. The reason for that it is that it is a fat lot of use having standards when we know that they have not introduced standards or been able to enforce their own current voluntary codes at the moment. So we will be doing it. I have said that very firmly here in this house before and I say it again.
In my view, the emergence of Elite Taxis and Silver Service Taxis has guaranteed pick-up and delivery and all those sorts of things for an extra cost, if you book it. If you flag it down, you pay the ordinary taxi fare. But if you book it, you pay the extra. That is pretty ordinary. If you ring up a taxi company, you expect to have a guaranteed pick-up when you nominate the time. What is happening is that people are paying more for an ordinary service. In fact, that has done nothing except reduce the size of the fleet by the number of Elite and Silver Service cabs on the road. And I am not happy about that bit either.
We talk about the taxi customers having no guarantee. There is not much we can do about that, because, if you ring up an electrician or a plumber to come around to your house and he says, “I will be around there at 8 o’clock,” you can be still waiting for him at 10 o’clock, with no contact from that company. It happens all the time in this city. We need to make sure that we treat all commercial enterprises in the same way and not regulate them to do it.
However, we have the minimum standards in the legislation so that a taxi network will be penalised if they do not pick up a certain percentage of people within the time that they have booked. They have the sanctions, and they use them occasionally. They take that taxi driver off the air and dry up the supply of service. They have their own rules and their own contracts with their drivers. So there are sanctions already existing. It is a case of whether the company, the taxi network, has the will to do it.
This is part of a suite of changes. Dr Foskey talked about lots more needing to be done. We have got the limousines done; we have got the DRT done; we have got this taxi system; we have got minimum standards being introduced. One of the important parts of this particular piece of legislation is that we will be putting more money in the pocket of the actual taxi licence holder who is driving his or her cab, such that there is an incentive for them to get out there and do a good job. Most taxi drivers in this town are wonderful people and are quite professional. But this industry is in such a state of malaise that it has to fix itself. If it will not fix itself, then this government will do so for it and I will be enforcing those fines.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
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