Page 3769 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 28 October 2015
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Through this reform package we are looking to the future, not trying to protect an industry from an inevitable change. Change in industry, structural adjustments, technology—all of these things are commonplace across almost every aspect of our lives. And the idea that we can put our heads in the sand and not seek to respond to these changing circumstances, and that the advent of new ways of delivering services, whether they are delivered globally or locally, is somehow an attack on Canberra, as the opposition speaker put forward, is just farcical. They are just farcical assertions. Are we going to become the North Korea of Australia, and try to isolate ourselves from what happens in the rest of this country and the rest of the world? It is sheer economic lunacy, but it is what we have come to expect from Alistair Coe.
There is no doubt that these reforms will give Canberra consumers more choices and that prices will fall through competition. From later this week Canberrans will be the first people in Australia to be able to legally use ride sharing services. New operators will not just mean lower prices; it will also mean a much wider range of services and offerings. We are already seeing competitors to Uber wanting to enter our market. As well as through competition, government reforms will also lower prices by capping surcharges on the outrageous price gouging that we have been seeing in this industry for some time when it comes to electronic payments.
The economic modelling shows that ride sharing will offer a financial benefit to the Canberra community of around $3.5 million annually after five years. The government’s reforms, though, also go to reducing costs and regulations for taxi operators. I was determined, in undertaking this reform task, to remove unnecessary regulation wherever possible and that the level playing field that many advocated for to allow competition would be put in place. So that is why we have cut fees dramatically. As Mr Coe indicated in his speech, the annual taxi licence fee will be cut in half, to $10,000, and in a year’s time it will be cut in half again.
Under the government’s reforms a range of important protections for the taxi industry will remain in place. For example, only taxis will be able to access taxi ranks and will be able to accept hailed fares on the street. We know that those two components of taxi work comprise about half of all work in Canberra today, and that will remain exclusively for taxis.
We are also seeking to reduce other areas of red tape to make sure that our regulations are about managing risks, not about managing businesses. For instance, we will remove the requirement for taxi drivers to wear uniforms. Whether or not staff wear uniforms is properly a matter for business, not for government.
Our reforms are designed so that our regulations focus firmly on safety—safety for the consumer and protections for drivers. Under our reforms any driver whose transport booking service does not let them drive for other services, so that they have an exclusive relationship with that transport booking service, will be considered an employee for workers compensation arrangements. This protection will be true regardless of how many shifts a driver drives. If you demand that someone drives exclusively for you then they are an employee for workers compensation purposes. It is as simple as that.
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