Page 448 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 2019
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work with the industry to ensure on-demand transport needs are being met no matter where Canberrans live or what their accessibility needs are.
Plate owners and other industry stakeholders such as drivers, operators and booking services have been engaging with government since before the reforms were introduced. And, again, to pick up my earlier theme, I have mentioned drivers, operators and booking services as well as plate owners. Each of these has a different take on how the taxi industry should operate. They have different views on what the government should do. So even within the taxi industry there are a range of competing interests that we have to try to balance out and find a fair way through as the industry is shaken up by changing technologies, by new entrants, by changing community expectations and the like. This is the difficult challenge that is before us.
The government is keenly aware of the personal pressure that participants in the industry may be feeling. Again, there are different participants in the industry. And they may have felt that for some time as the on-demand transport industry evolves and as we continue to implement reforms to meet the community’s needs.
The primary responsibility of government is to support the provision of valuable services to our community, which is why we are focused on industry reforms that improve the quality of on-demand transport services, including taxis, and the long-term viability of the taxi industry. The ACT government considers taxi plates a community asset that delivers essential services to the community rather than an exclusive investment product.
We will continue to monitor the on-demand transport market to ensure greater consumer choice, greater service quality and accessibility in our rapidly growing city and to try to navigate a way though the changing expectations, the changing pressures, the changing environment and find a regulatory framework that is as fair as possible to the many competing interests in this space.
The Greens will be supporting the amendment put forward by Minister Ramsay today. I do note that a number of the points in Miss C Burch’s motion are not reflective of my understanding of the circumstances. I think the attorney has outlined a number of those matters more clearly. Therefore, we will be supporting that amendment put forward by Mr Ramsay.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (10.58): The ACT government have severely let down hundreds of Canberra families through what they have done over the last four or five years. For a government that claims to be based on social justice principles, the Greens, I think, have been absolutely negligent in their responsibility to not just their coalition partners but also to the ACT public at large.
Of course the government’s response, several years after their so-called reforms, is quite predictable. But of course the government’s response—the Labor Party’s response—now is in stark contrast to the Labor Party elsewhere in the country but also to the Labor Party of the past here in the ACT. For decades the Labor Party recognised the value of perpetual plate owners in the ACT. For decades they fought to protect that investment.
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