Page 3649 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 September 2018
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Thank you for your interest and commitment. Thank you for your service to this role. I really look forward to reading the statement.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Reforms to the on-demand transport industry in the ACT
Ministerial statement
MR RAMSAY (Ginninderra—Attorney-General, Minister for the Arts and Cultural Events, Minister for Building Quality Improvement, Minister for Business and Regulatory Services and Minister for Seniors and Veterans) (10.46): Today I rise to speak on the government’s policy on the on-demand transport industry and to table the evaluation of the ACT government’s 2015 taxi innovation reforms, the result of many months of work, based on feedback from thousands of Canberrans.
Members would recall that this parliament was the first in the nation to pass a modern regulatory framework for the ride-share industry. This followed our deregulation of hire cars in 2010. Together, taxis, ride share and hire cars comprise the on-demand transport industry in the ACT.
When we introduced the legislation to provide for the legal entry of ride-share services into the ACT in 2015, we promised that we would evaluate these reforms after two years of operation. We commenced that evaluation in late 2017 and took into consideration the effects of the reforms on passengers, including people with a disability, the broader user community and industry participants.
We looked at changing travel choices, changes in wait times for service, fare levels and choices, the levels of safety and the overall quality of travel experiences. Importantly, we looked carefully at the quality of wheelchair accessible transport services, or WAT services, and the broader accessibility of on-demand transport, and the operation of the centralised WAT booking service.
As part of the evaluation, we observed the changing structure of the industry itself, including fleet sizes and composition, and the extent and differentiation of booking services. We considered the experiences of industry providers, including work conditions and their viability, their revenues and earnings and work hours, and their relationships with operators and booking services.
From a social and community perspective, we wanted to understand how consumers were using and experiencing these services, what they considered important and what impacted on their choices. We also wanted to understand how services for people with mobility issues were operating.
From an economic perspective, we sought to understand if the market was operating efficiently or if it was exhibiting any failures. Such failures can take the form of the dominance of market providers, inefficient pricing or other negative impacts, such as patterns of safety incidents.
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