November 2007

REASONABLNESS AND FAIRENESS

Well done, Cats. You were magnificent in demolishing the hapless Port Power. I wonder whether the City of Geelong will ever recover…oh well, they have another 44 years to so.

In my opinion, the two best games of the final series involved Collingwood – against the West Coast Eagles and against Geelong. Good, solid and down-to-earth footy, where the result could have gone either way.

Well, that’s that until next year. Now, onto the matter of taxis.

Government has followed through on its driver safety taskforce announcement to place a taxi liaison officer at the VTD. The position was advertised last month with the following description:

This newly established role aims to enhance the quality of taxi services by delivering a support, advice and referral service to taxi drivers on issues that affect them as providers of services to the public. Key accountabilities include developing collaborative relationships with multiple stakeholders to identify and resolve taxi driver issues, establishing and monitoring trends in the taxi industry and reporting on emerging taxi driver issues.

As anticipated, last month, the Minister for Public Transport released two important taxi industry accreditation documents for public comment – the draft industry performance standards and the draft amendments to the taxi regulations.

Comments by the Minister and the government’s statement appear in this issue of Taxi Talk.

As Taxi Talk readers will know, the VTA has previously expressed the view that an aspect of the draft standards is unacceptable because it is likely to diminish performance and the quality of service delivered to the public. The formal response submitted by the VTA to the invitation for public comment again raised this very real concern.

Putting taxi industry accreditation to one side for a moment, a most worrying issue is the outrageous shenanigans with metropolitan licence assignments.

It is gut wrenching to see what is happening to taxi operators who lose their assignments because they are unable to meet the outrageous demands made by a few licence holders and their so-called agents, who not only demand high assignment fees, but also demand a sign-up fee by the payment of a large cash sum, or the purchase of a taxi vehicle priced two to four times higher than the market value, or both.

Government is investigating ways of addressing this situation, possibly including changes to the licensing and assignment regime.

The potential for changes to the licensing regime shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone given that it was an important discussion point through the National Competition Policy Review, and more recently in 2005, when the Essential Services Commission reported to the then Minister for Transport on taxi fares.

The fact remains though that government needs to ensure that the taxi industry remains viable and provides a high standard of service to the community. This, in effect, means two things - it is not a matter of opening the floodgates to allow an unlimited number of taxis, but it is a matter of ensuring the revenue flowing into the industry via the fare box is fairly put to rewarding the people who deliver the service: the taxi operator and the taxi driver.

I now return to the draft taxi industry accreditation standards. You will note that government has included taxi licence holders in the chain of responsibility and intend to impose performance standards.

How this will work in reality is yet to be seen, but it clearly demonstrates that government believes that licence holders are part of both the supply chain and the responsibility chain.

In regard to assignments, reasonableness and fairness really are the best policies.

Neil Sach
VTA CEO