Page 446 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 2019
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(3) calls on the ACT Government to continue to roll out its reforms to the taxi industry in an evidence-based way, to broaden consumer choices, while supporting a high quality, reliable on-demand transport industry.”.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong—Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability, Minister for Corrections and Justice Health, Minister for Justice, Consumer Affairs and Road Safety and Minister for Mental Health) (10.49): I would like to reiterate the importance of high quality, reliable, on-demand transport. Canberra is growing and we need to ensure quality services are available to meet the needs of our local community and visitors. Government has a duty to regulate in this regard.
We need to look at the changing demand, the changing technology and the changing markets and regulate appropriately because we have a duty to the people of Canberra. That is the rationale behind the reforms that have occurred since 2015. I accept that the changing transport environment, as well as changing regulations and the entrance of new providers, has impacted on people’s investments in perpetual plates. That is unfortunate, and I express my sympathies to people who are affected and feel aggrieved by those changes.
But it is not the role of the government to regulate solely to try to protect the value of investments that people have made. As I said, we have to respond to the changing environment and the changing needs of the travelling Canberra population. As I said in question time yesterday, these are difficult balancing acts where there are many competing interests and trying to find the right path through that is indeed a challenging proposition.
I think it is important to note—and it has been said many times before—that no ACT government has sold any perpetual taxi plates since 1995. To put that a different way, the last perpetual taxi plate sold by any ACT government was 23 years ago. This puts us in a very different situation to other jurisdictions that are providing some compensation to taxi plate owners. Those governments continued selling taxi plates right up until the period when they introduced reforms that changed the taxi landscape.
I note that the Liberal Party has promised to compensate ACT perpetual taxi plate owners. As the attorney has just touched on, the requested amount is $76 million. That is an amount that will need to be budgeted for and I invite the Canberra Liberals to stand up in the chamber today and clarify exactly how much compensation they intend to provide to owners of perpetual taxi plates and exactly how that will be funded. I think we need clarity on that.
We need to know where the money is coming from and I think the taxi plate owners, having been made this promise, deserve to know exactly how much it is intended to be. It will significantly affect the budget and the money available for other community services. And I think it is important that we have clarity on what that is.
We do support a strong and healthy taxi industry because it provides an important service to the community. The ACT government held extensive, ongoing consultation with the on-demand transport industry in 2015, 2017 and again in 2018. A six-week
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