Page 401 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 2019
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a right question to ask, rather than an individual member misleading the Assembly. I will check Hansard just to be sure.
Taxis—government assistance
MR PARTON: My question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, do taxi owner-operators like Stanley, who is with us today, deserve to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars simply because they trusted the ACT government?
MR BARR: As I have indicated on numerous occasions during this line of questioning from the opposition, there is no guarantee of investment return in any industry. No government will ever, or can ever, give that guarantee.
Mr Wall interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Wall.
Mr Wall interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Wall, you are now warned.
MR BARR: It remains a fact that this government has not sold any perpetual taxi licences—none. It has not sold any.
Mrs Jones: It’s released more.
MR BARR: We have not sold any—absolutely none.
MR PARTON: Chief Minister, was Stanley wrong to put his trust in ACT government regulations?
MR BARR: Everyone who makes an investment decision based on a perception that government policy or circumstances in a market will never change would not be making an astute investment because everything changes all of the time in almost every industry ever in the history of the world. There is no guarantee on any investment. There cannot be, because circumstances change, and this industry is no different from hundreds of other industries around the world over the history of time where things have changed. The devaluation of a taxi plate licence to the extent that that is a real phenomenon in the market is impacted by so—
Mrs Dunne: Turn around and ask them whether it is a real phenomenon.
MR BARR: You are asking me to breach the standing orders, Mrs Dunne, and not address the chair. You are the standing order Nazi—Mrs Dunne is—all the time.
Mrs Dunne: On a point of order, Madam Speaker; two points of order—
MR BARR: I withdraw. Mrs Dunne is fastidious about standing orders.
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