Thursday, 21 March 2024

Commercial passenger vehicle industry

Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (09:57): Today I want to talk about taxis, and in fact I want to talk about Uber. Uber has just agreed to pay $271 million to 8000 or so taxidrivers that were negatively impacted by Ubers entering into the market back in the 58th Parliament – I cannot remember exactly when. That was the fifth-largest settlement of a class action of its kind in Australia. Nearly all of these taxidrivers lost some income. Some of them lost their homes, some of them lost their superannuation, and quite sadly, some of them lost their lives. On the courtroom steps, after all these years of refusing to do the right things, Uber blinked – and rather than take it to trial, they decided to settle. Our very own former MP, the Transport Matters Party’s Rod Barton, who himself drove cabs – his dad drove cabs; his uncle was a London cabbie, as he used to always tell us – helped bring the case to the lawyers. He told me it was a significant win. I was here when the whole industry went down. I do not think it was handled particularly well, but it was handled. I think the government at one stage did give some compensation. I think there is still a long way to go. I just want to point out that Mr Barton and his people and Maurice Blackburn never gave up and took it as far as they needed to. I think the win is to be commended.