Page 447 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 2019
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community consultation period was undertaken in 2015, in which 60 written submissions were provided and the ACT government received 2,000 survey responses. As part of the evaluation of the 2015 reforms, stakeholder engagement was carried out between July and September 2017 and included calls for submissions, public consultations and surveys.
Recently we consulted members of the community on further taxi deregulation through the ACT government your say process and focus groups. Through each consultation, members of the Canberra community have affirmed interest in the continued viability of taxi services in Canberra, as they provide a unique and valuable service.
As the Minister for Business and Regulatory Services has outlined, the government undertook a review of the taxi and hire car industry in 2015 to explore opportunities to regulate alternative, digital modes of on-demand transport such as rideshare and to address consumer interests in a more differentiated and higher quality service. During 2015 and 2016 we introduced reforms to support the ongoing competitiveness of taxi and hire car services and committed to evaluating the impact of these reforms. During 2017 this evaluation was undertaken and included consideration of opportunities to further improve outcomes for consumers, the community and participants in the industry.
The reforms since 2015 have implemented objectives for all industry participants such as taxi operators by helping to reduce their costs, therefore making the industry more viable for working participants to ensure their services continue to be provided. The regulatory approach seeks to balance the outcomes sought by all stakeholders and has been welcomed by the majority of Canberrans. In the most recent engagement with on-demand transport users the main concerns identified were cost, safety, reliability, cleanliness of taxis and maintaining a balance between taxi and rideshare numbers.
The ACT government has been gradually releasing extra taxi licences into the local market over the past few years to ensure we have services readily available to meet the needs of our growing population and visitors from interstate and around the world. The decision to release more taxi licences has been made on the data that shows the ACT is among the fastest growing populations of any state or territory in Australia. Between 2011 and 2017 our population increased by 12 per cent, to more than 410,000. At the same time the number of visitors to the ACT grew 36 per cent, to more than 4.9 million.
The ACT government monitors the availability of taxi licences to support the demand generated by our community’s growing population and visitors to Canberra for tourism and business. The release of taxi licences is designed to support that necessary growth in supply. And I think it is worth reflecting on the fact that, picking up my earlier theme about many competing interests in this discussion, there has been heavy criticism of the government and strong demands by some in the Canberra community for the release of more licences—the criticism for not releasing enough.
This goes back to that very point that this is a delicate and difficult balancing act of trying to meet the many competing demands in this space. What we are trying to do is
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