Page 400 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 2019
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Canberra and tourism numbers; and we need to try to ensure that there is clear information available to all of the people with various interests in this discussion.
Taxis—government assistance
MRS JONES: My question is to the Minister for Justice, Consumer Affairs and Road Safety. Minister, in December 2018 you were provided by ACTTPOA with a detailed report and evidence of massive social and economic impacts to these small business owners in the ACT taxi industry. Despite your commitment both to review the material and to meet with the representatives in January 2019, you denied the meeting with the ACTTPOA and proceeded to support the government’s policy that issued 30 new ACT government taxi plates. Why did you refuse the meeting?
MR RATTENBURY: As Mrs Jones has outlined, I did met with the ACTTPOA in December and we had a number of discussions then. At that time, the government had already indicated its intent to issue a series of taxi plate licences—80, not the 142 the opposition has claimed. It was 80. We had given an indication of a time line for that.
In light of the meeting I had with the Taxi Plate Owners Association, I further considered the material, and the date of release of some of those plates did take a bit longer as I sought to review some of that material. To go to Mrs Jones’s question directly as to why I did not take the second meeting in January, in the intervening period I was threatened with legal action by the Taxi Plate Owners Association. On legal advice, I declined to take a further meeting.
MRS JONES: Minister, will you now meet with taxi plate owners like Ibrahim, Sok, Simeon, Bozna, Antonia and Ado?
MR RATTENBURY: As I outlined in my previous answer, given the circumstances that have now been forming and the threats of litigation, I have been advised that those meetings should not take place.
MISS C BURCH: Minister, will you apologise to the taxi plate owners who are sitting in the gallery today for knowingly misleading them into thinking that you stand for fairness and social justice when you continue to support a government policy that is neither fair nor just?
MR RATTENBURY: All I can say is that we have thought about these matters very carefully. These are not black and white matters; they are difficult matters to work through. I have thought about this quite carefully and we are trying to proceed in a way that takes into account the range of interests that are present in this debate.
Mr Steel: Point of order, Madam Speaker. In her question, Miss C Burch used the word “misleading” in reference to Minister Rattenbury. I understand that that is unparliamentary language. I ask her to withdraw.
MADAM SPEAKER: I will review Hansard on it, but it is my understanding that the premise was about misleading the taxi community, which is within the scope of being
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