Page 3991 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 12 December 2006
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which preserves the monopoly—quite the opposite—and we have demonstrated that by the assistance we have been giving the second network to become accredited. But at the end of the day this is not a government service; this is a private company. Once upon a time it was a cooperative, a collective of all the drivers and owners getting together and running themselves as a business—not any more; it is not. It is a full-on private company.
The sad part, of course, is that the travelling public have no alternative if they want to travel by taxis, except for the hire car industry. We cannot do much more than we have already done. With the talk about having an inquiry, I am also mindful of the amount of work that the planning and environment committee has got on its plate. It seems to me that by the time the committee got to the stage of being able to consider submissions, let alone take evidence from witnesses, it is quite possible that they will be out of date because the second network will be up and running. I cannot see the committee doing anything constructive with things, other than to receive and file submissions, between now and the end of February, in which case I am fairly confident the second network will be up and running.
As an aside, Mr Speaker, I have also written to the CEO of Aerial asking that person to show cause why I should not bring forward legislation into this place by form of a regulation to insist on a human alternative to the automated booking system. I have not received any response from him yet. So to those talking about going on a witch-hunt to try and criticise the government for not being cooperative in this system I suggest that it is the other way around. As I said, senior people in my office have been speaking to people. We have been cooperative—more cooperative than could be expected, I think, in other circumstances. I do not support the motion and the government will not be supporting the motion.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.40), in reply: Mr Speaker, the response from the minister is predictable—sadly so. This is not about the voice-activated system. It seems to be the only thing that this minister can talk about because he is so preoccupied with—and I will say it again—slagging off at the taxi industry. He stood up here and said how dare I say that he slagged off the taxi industry—and then immediately went into a process of slagging off at the taxi industry. He will say, “Look, all the drivers are really great but the service is rotten,” and that is basically what it boils down to.
What we actually have here today are 270-odd drivers and operators saying that they want the government to cooperate with them to make a better taxi industry, and this minister says, “I’m not going to do anything. I’m not interested. I can’t do anything. We bend over backwards and we are not going to do anything about it.” This is the minister responsible for regulating the taxi industry. This is the minister responsible for setting the service standards for the taxi industry. He might say that this is a free market; but it is not an entirely free market, because he sets the rules. And there are problems with the rules and they are not just problems about the voice recognition system.
This minister has said today, and on a number of occasions, that he essentially wants to ensure that there is a human voice answering every call—every one of the 70 or
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