Page 3990 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 12 December 2006
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very, very few exceptions, I believe the taxi drivers in this town are amongst the best that I have struck anywhere in the world. I am quite happy to say that yet again in public.
I think an outline of what has been the consultation process, if you like, or even just the process around the difficulties with the network at the moment, might be in order. We were advised a year ago or more that there was to be this voice-activated system, a new system, introduced. That was fine, and away it went. Then I started to receive complaints that the system was not working, and I said to the CEO of Aerial consolidated taxis that this was not good enough and that they had to get on with it and get it fixed, at which time I said, “If you don’t fix it, we will do something about it.”
What did we do about it? We have already discussed in this place the wheelchair-accessible taxis, and I am not going to go down that track for the purpose of this discussion. But we introduced new minimum standards that must be complied with and penalties which attach to them. I indicated then the government’s absolute intention to apply those sanctions if the minimum standards were not met, and we gave the network three months, in the interests of natural justice, to get on with it and do it. To the network’s credit, the minimum standards were predominantly met, with the exception of a couple, and sanctions will be applied by the regulator for those that were not.
It has been said that we should work with the network to raise the standard again of good service delivered to the travelling public. Well, I would suggest to you, Mr Speaker, that that is exactly what has been happening. The conversations with the department have been as often as weekly, and as infrequently as fortnightly, in terms of trying to talk to the network about how they can work their way through this.
There has been a standing invitation to Aerial consolidated taxis to meet with my office and, with the exception of an informed meeting from time to time, that offer has never been taken up, in the same way as the government’s offer of $100,000 to micromanage the WAT system was never taken up. The CEO of Aerial consolidated taxis has also had conversations with senior members of my staff to work their way through it.
In terms of the general taxi service around town, officers of my department have worked particularly closely with people seeking accreditation as a second network. The accreditation of that second network is all but complete; there are just a couple of small things that need to be tidied up. It will be up to that network when it commences business after it has been accredited. My guesstimation on that—and please understand that it is a guesstimation—would be that it will occur about February, and the reason for that is that, even if accreditation was to happen in the next couple of weeks, we are about to enter into the very quiet time for taxi service in this town, so the profits are probably not there. It would also give them a little bit of extra time to make sure the equipment is installed in those cabs.
I do understand the travelling public’s anger and anxiety. We have done an enormous amount of work on behalf of the community to try to get this company to provide a good service. But you need to understand also that there is no legislation in this town
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