Page 1073 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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I will note again, as I did in my previous speech, that the PricewaterhouseCoopers report did not cost and analyse the proposal that was put forward in the WAT Consortium submission to the tax review. That is why we ask for the feasibility study, as this work has not been done. The work has not been done. The feasibility study on that proposal was not done, and it states that in the report. There has been no analysis of what is currently being spent on subsidies and other fees. That is the thing. We have not done an analysis of that. As I keep restating, yet again we have got a proposal to increase or put in place more subsidies and more fees.
We do not have any analysis of how much putting in a centralised booking system before has cost the community. We have got those monetary costs but again we do not know what it is costing the disability community in time in terms of their not being able to attend appointments, go to social functions, being left for hours and hours waiting for a WAT service. We do not know the cost of that. That is something you cannot put a monetary value on. We can put a monetary value on some things such as subsidies. That analysis has not been done. But we cannot put a cost on what it is actually doing to the disability community. As I have already said, we have a proposal that will spend more on subsidies. It is going to spend more on subsidies plus spend over $400,000 on a central booking system. That is a lot of money to be doing something.
Mr Doszpot talked about evidence. We have evidence that that thing has not worked before. We have got that evidence. It did not work before and yet we are going to pour more money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, into something that has not worked before. Where is the good practice in that? There is no good practice in that at all.
Mr Doszpot was saying that this is the Greens’ agenda. This is not the Greens’ agenda. What we are putting forward today came from the WAT Consortium which involves representatives across the disability sector. It also takes up issues that have been put forward by the Canberra Taxi Industry Association. I actually spoke to representatives yesterday and they said, “We have differences about the idea of salaried drivers but what we want is something different. We do not care how it is done but we need a centralised system that separates WAT taxis from the general system.” They are concerned also that the centralised booking system is actually going to work. Again, they know that it has not worked before.
What we are actually putting forward is not the Greens’ agenda. It is what has been put forward by the disability sector and people from the Taxi Industry Association. So it is vastly incorrect to be saying something like that and quite insulting to the disability sector as well, I think.
Mr Doszpot talked about guarantees. What guarantees does the current government propose to offer to people with a disability, given it has failed in the past? What guarantees does it give to them that, if you put in place something that has failed before, you are going to say to them, “This time we are going to make it work. We are going to put in place more fees. We are going to put in place more subsidies. They have not worked in the past either but we are going to do that again”? There are no
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