❓ Question regarding initiatives for Perth's multipurpose taxi fleet. The Minister outlines safety improvements, increased inspections, and plans to increase the number of multipurpose taxis and associated lifting fees to improve access for disabled users.
AnsweredQoN 356Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
MULTIPURPOSE TAXI
FLEET
356. Mr M.W. SUTHERLAND to the Minister for Transport:
I am aware of the demands placed on Perth's
multipurpose taxi fleet. Can the minister please outline recent initiatives in
relation to the multipurpose taxi fleet and the benefits of this to users of
that service?
FLEET
356. Mr M.W. SUTHERLAND to the Minister for Transport:
I am aware of the demands placed on Perth's
multipurpose taxi fleet. Can the minister please outline recent initiatives in
relation to the multipurpose taxi fleet and the benefits of this to users of
that service?
AnswerView source ↗
I thank the member and I will. But
before I do that, to the students from Esperance who are in the gallery: we
have just about completed the clean-up of Esperance. I know it is not the
question, but I am sure you will indulge me, Mr Speaker. We spent $25 million
cleaning up 2 500 homes. When people come into this place, they sometimes see
the difference between people who do stuff and the people who do not do stuff.
The former government did not do stuff! That is why Inpex is in Darwin and that
is why Esperance was contaminated.
In relation to multipurpose taxis
and taxis more broadly, a lot of stuff has been happening, member. A lot of
things have been happening in and around the taxi industry.
Mr
P. Abetz : Paint them gold!
Mr
T.R. BUSWELL : No—that is one bit of stuff that is not happening!
Moving on, we said that we would focus on quality, safety and
availability. I will very quickly touch on a couple of issues. In relation to
safety, $7.7 million has been spent on putting cameras in cabs so that we can
understand what is happening there, and $2 million has been spent on a new rank
in Northbridge. A trial has been introduced so that there are security guards
in motor vehicles on Friday and Saturday nights who are ready to respond to
taxis in distress. In the first six months, there were 60 cases in which those
security guards attended vehicles and calmed antisocial situations. That is 60
opportunities in which, in the past, drivers may well have been assaulted. It
is a great outcome. There are better standards in the taxi industry. There are
more people and more vehicles on the road. To put that into perspective, in
2008, 717 taxi inspections were conducted by the Department of Transport; in
2011, there were 5 399. We are out and about making sure that the industry has
its socks up. The occupational licensing system, which will introduce demerit
points, is being developed.
There is a big challenge in the multipurpose taxi area. There
are about 100 multipurpose taxis on the road. That number has not changed since
2006, but clearly there is significant demand for multipurpose taxis. Indeed, I
can remember a grievance from the member for Albany in particular about a lady
who had a lot of trouble catching a multipurpose taxi. It is a message that I
hear all too often. The government has made a commitment to get more
multipurpose taxis on the road. Our target is to increase that number from 100
to about 145 in the first instance. But that costs money. Every multipurpose
taxi gets a capital grant from the government of $15 000 to assist in putting
in the lifter at the back of the taxi. So it will cost money to put another 50
on the road. To help attract people into the multipurpose end of the industry,
we have increased the lifting fee that is paid for multipurpose taxis. For a
private job, the lifting fee will increase from $7 to $10; if the job comes
from the taxi despatch, the fee will increase from $10 to $12; and if the lift
is done late at night, the fee will increase from $20 to $30. This will result
in an investment of $7.5 million over the next four years to help the people
who rely on multipurpose taxis in this state—the many disabled people
for whom a multipurpose taxi is the only mode of transport. I sincerely hope
that this will help them get better access to that important transport linkage.
It is interesting that the member for Southern River should
talk about gold taxis. I know that I make a bit of fun of the member who raised
that issue, but the reason I do that is that yesterday I went through the $29 million
of extra debt that the opposition has committed to transport. I went through
only a few of the line items—there are a lot of them, because the
opposition does a lot of promising—and there was only one mention of
taxis. There has been only one initiative from the opposition about taxis in
Perth—that is, to waste $10 million of taxpayers' money on
painting taxis gold. I am interested to know whether the Leader of the
Opposition will stand by his promise to spend $10 million on painting taxis
gold come election time. I suspect that it will go the same way as the
opposition's light rail promise—out the door.
We are spending $10 million on helping disabled people to
access cabs. We are spending it on making cabs safer. The only other thing the
opposition has done in relation to taxis is oppose the government's
efforts to put 300 more cabs on the road. When I kept talking about an action
plan for taxis, which is stuff we are doing, the opposition said that we needed
to have a committee and a review to come up with some sort of broad-sweeping
statements and some glossy document. We have not done that, but we have
collated into the taxi action plan the things we have done and are doing. That
is now on the web. The Leader of the Opposition should have a look. These are
the sorts of things he should fund to provide better taxi outcomes for the
people of Perth and, in particular, better taxi outcomes in the multipurpose
taxi area, because those taxis are relied on by some of the most vulnerable
people in our society. I am glad that that $7 million is going to supporting
them, not to making sure that the cab that drives past their home is painted
gold.
before I do that, to the students from Esperance who are in the gallery: we
have just about completed the clean-up of Esperance. I know it is not the
question, but I am sure you will indulge me, Mr Speaker. We spent $25 million
cleaning up 2 500 homes. When people come into this place, they sometimes see
the difference between people who do stuff and the people who do not do stuff.
The former government did not do stuff! That is why Inpex is in Darwin and that
is why Esperance was contaminated.
In relation to multipurpose taxis
and taxis more broadly, a lot of stuff has been happening, member. A lot of
things have been happening in and around the taxi industry.
Mr
P. Abetz : Paint them gold!
Mr
T.R. BUSWELL : No—that is one bit of stuff that is not happening!
Moving on, we said that we would focus on quality, safety and
availability. I will very quickly touch on a couple of issues. In relation to
safety, $7.7 million has been spent on putting cameras in cabs so that we can
understand what is happening there, and $2 million has been spent on a new rank
in Northbridge. A trial has been introduced so that there are security guards
in motor vehicles on Friday and Saturday nights who are ready to respond to
taxis in distress. In the first six months, there were 60 cases in which those
security guards attended vehicles and calmed antisocial situations. That is 60
opportunities in which, in the past, drivers may well have been assaulted. It
is a great outcome. There are better standards in the taxi industry. There are
more people and more vehicles on the road. To put that into perspective, in
2008, 717 taxi inspections were conducted by the Department of Transport; in
2011, there were 5 399. We are out and about making sure that the industry has
its socks up. The occupational licensing system, which will introduce demerit
points, is being developed.
There is a big challenge in the multipurpose taxi area. There
are about 100 multipurpose taxis on the road. That number has not changed since
2006, but clearly there is significant demand for multipurpose taxis. Indeed, I
can remember a grievance from the member for Albany in particular about a lady
who had a lot of trouble catching a multipurpose taxi. It is a message that I
hear all too often. The government has made a commitment to get more
multipurpose taxis on the road. Our target is to increase that number from 100
to about 145 in the first instance. But that costs money. Every multipurpose
taxi gets a capital grant from the government of $15 000 to assist in putting
in the lifter at the back of the taxi. So it will cost money to put another 50
on the road. To help attract people into the multipurpose end of the industry,
we have increased the lifting fee that is paid for multipurpose taxis. For a
private job, the lifting fee will increase from $7 to $10; if the job comes
from the taxi despatch, the fee will increase from $10 to $12; and if the lift
is done late at night, the fee will increase from $20 to $30. This will result
in an investment of $7.5 million over the next four years to help the people
who rely on multipurpose taxis in this state—the many disabled people
for whom a multipurpose taxi is the only mode of transport. I sincerely hope
that this will help them get better access to that important transport linkage.
It is interesting that the member for Southern River should
talk about gold taxis. I know that I make a bit of fun of the member who raised
that issue, but the reason I do that is that yesterday I went through the $29 million
of extra debt that the opposition has committed to transport. I went through
only a few of the line items—there are a lot of them, because the
opposition does a lot of promising—and there was only one mention of
taxis. There has been only one initiative from the opposition about taxis in
Perth—that is, to waste $10 million of taxpayers' money on
painting taxis gold. I am interested to know whether the Leader of the
Opposition will stand by his promise to spend $10 million on painting taxis
gold come election time. I suspect that it will go the same way as the
opposition's light rail promise—out the door.
We are spending $10 million on helping disabled people to
access cabs. We are spending it on making cabs safer. The only other thing the
opposition has done in relation to taxis is oppose the government's
efforts to put 300 more cabs on the road. When I kept talking about an action
plan for taxis, which is stuff we are doing, the opposition said that we needed
to have a committee and a review to come up with some sort of broad-sweeping
statements and some glossy document. We have not done that, but we have
collated into the taxi action plan the things we have done and are doing. That
is now on the web. The Leader of the Opposition should have a look. These are
the sorts of things he should fund to provide better taxi outcomes for the
people of Perth and, in particular, better taxi outcomes in the multipurpose
taxi area, because those taxis are relied on by some of the most vulnerable
people in our society. I am glad that that $7 million is going to supporting
them, not to making sure that the cab that drives past their home is painted
gold.
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