Page 3813 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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the additional services that they feel are necessitated by this bill and at the same time deliver tax reform for the people of Canberra. We will talk about that a little later in the day.
I would also, particularly for the benefit of our younger Canberrans, highlight recommendation 5. Whilst the Nightlink taxi scheme is an initiative that I think all members will be pleased to support, along with the provision of taxi rank marshals, the minister also alluded to private security being enforced to ensure the pre-payment of fares and the ability to be alert to antisocial conduct. This is a major issue for young people going out in the city. On Saturday night, I met up with a friend from overseas. When I went to go home from south Canberra, I waited for two hours to get a taxi.
I made repeated calls and was never able to make contact with an operator. When I eventually flagged down a cab, the driver said to me that the previous passenger had reported five assaults in the last 30 minutes on the cab rank in Civic and that he did all he could to avoid Civic at night, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, because of antisocial behaviour, violence and what he called “runners”—people who absconded without paying their fares.
The minister contended in the hearings that taxi drivers do not drive at night for financial reasons. I asked the driver about this. I asked: “Is that the view of your colleagues? Is that why we can’t get cabs at night?” He said: “That isn’t the reason. You can make the money, all right, but the fact is that we don’t want to drive because of the trouble in Civic.”
As long as we continue to turn a blind eye, as long as TAMS say, “It’s not our problem, it’s policing,” while this quarrel continues on the front bench of the government, the people of Canberra will be disadvantaged. We want to see more visible policing in Civic so that people can go about their business with quiet enjoyment and not be disturbed by the minority of louts and intoxicated people who cause this violence and intimidate law-abiding citizens. The Nightlink taxi service is a step in the right direction, but we need to be confident that there will be a prompt police response to back up those people responsible for maintaining order. Without that, the system will be no better than what we have in place at present.
As Dr Foskey said, the committee is quite concerned about the costs associated with the Beijing Olympic torch relay. For that reason, we have appended the draft budget to the back of this report. It is an extraordinary budget. Despite the obvious television benefit that this event will create, we do note that this is somewhat ambit in that the commonwealth government, we understand, is likely to pick up half the tab. Frankly, I would not care if it was the Western Australian government paying for it.
Waste is waste, and I would raise serious questions about it. It was interesting that even the Chief Minister expressed concern about the money being spent on this torch relay—a one-day event costing $1 million. When you look at the breakdown, you see things such as a pre-relay media event for $28,000. That would have to be the most expensive media event ever held in the nation’s capital. When we look at route development—
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