by Erin Maclean

In this age of innovation, the way we go about our everyday lives has changed dramatically. The advent of Netflix, Spotify and Uber — to name just a few innovators — has greatly disrupted traditional business models.

While the goal is more flexible services that meet the varying needs of consumers, disruption has made life increasingly hard for governments that must regulate or address these new industries.

With Uber and Lyft, the ride-sharing apps that turns private cars into pseudo taxis, governments around the world have grappled with issues of tax, vehicle registration and insurance, as the lines between private and commercial car use blur.

Uber has also threatened the heavily regulated — and often expensive — taxi industry. Taxis, which require licenses that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in Australia, are struggling to compete with an app that lets almost anyone with a car become a contractor.

Thus, governments must step in and find a way to balance innovation with regulation — to ensure fairness, but also guarantee customer safety. In Queensland, that is exactly what is not yet happening.

What is happening in Queensland?

Later this month, the Queensland Parliament will read, for the second time, the Transport Legislation (Taxi Services) Amendment Bill 2015 that would increase penalties for drivers that act outside of existing regulations.

Though former Premier Campbell Newman was initially disinterested in addressing Uber when the ride-sharing service came to Brisbane in 2014, Newman later changed his mind and targeted Uber as an ‘illegal taxi service’. Since then, the Newman and now Palaszczuk governments have imposed heavy fines on the drivers — reportedly totalling more than $1.7 million in the 2014–2015 period.

But the Uber company itself, which maintains its service is not ‘illegal’ but instead ‘unregulated’, has often footed the bill for the fines and thwarted the government’s attempts to stop the service.

This latest piece of legislation, introduced by Mount Isa MP Rob Katter in late 2015, would increase the punishment to also include demerit points as a way of deterring Uber drivers. The amendment was, however, not recommended by the Queensland Parliament’s Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources Committee in its March report, because it did not go far enough to enforce compliance.

Ultimately, the Committee found two major changes are needed:

1. a new regulatory framework for ride-sharing services, to be addressed by the Personalised Transport Services Review later this year; and,
2. even greater penalties imposed upon illegal taxi services to better enforce current regulations.

That means that, into the foreseeable future, this form of innovation/disruption will continue to be fined (and punished in other ways), even while other Australian states — and other countries — push ahead with changes to accommodate the service.

How are other governments in Australia regulating the service?

Within Australia, Queensland is lagging behind the ACT, New South Wales and Western Australia.

The ACT was the first to act on ride-sharing services, making the activity legal in October 2015 — after more than a year of Uber operating in Australia. New South Wales soon followed, after the Point to Point Industry Taskforce, headed by Griffith University and ANZSOG Professor Gary Sturgess, handed down its recommendations in November.

The NSW government supported almost all of the taskforce’s 57 recommendations and, in doing so, has decided to differentiate the two major types of ‘point to point’ services: booked services, including Uber; and hail and rank services, which account for around 70 per cent of taxi work in and around Sydney.

Under this separation, services like Uber — and general hire cars — will no longer need to be fully licensed. Instead, these services will pay a small registration fee and be allowed to mostly regulate themselves. Self-regulation may seem risky, but the taskforce report explains that booked services already include safeguards, like GPS tracking through the Uber app, and are dependent on good reviews.

The government will, of course, maintain certain expectations of safety, but the responsibility is with the drivers and the employing company to ensure the services runs smoothly.

The hail and rank sector is a very different story. It will, under the separation, continue to be heavily regulated and require proper taxi licenses. Here, the argument is that, while booking services require a good relationship with customers, hail and rank services are anonymous, one-time affairs where the customer is in little position to negotiate fares and safety matters from the side of the road.

As a result, the government will continue to enforce safety standards — like the installation of security cameras — but the taxi industry will have greater freedom in deciding how to meet these standards.

To ease the transition for existing taxis and hire cars, the NSW government will also introduce $250 million of transitional assistance. Though that part of the ‘Point to Point’ plan is still underway, as is the review of compulsory third party insurance, the NSW government has acted relatively quickly to ensure that existing taxi services operate alongside Uber without trouble.

In Queensland and Victoria, however, Uber has been left in an awkward grey area of legality. Drivers are targeted with fines and small punishments, but continue to operate — to the horror of licensed taxi operators. Meanwhile, the Northern Territory and other states have stayed quiet on the matter.

The future of Uber’s digital disruption in Queensland

Regardless of what happens at this next reading of the Transport Legislation (Taxi Services) Amendment Bill, the reality is that, until the Personalised Transport Services Review comes through later this year, Uber will continue to be illegal in Queensland — and that means more fines for thousands of Uber drivers around the state and also, it seems, a continued backlash from the taxi industry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ERIN MACLEAN

Erin is a freelance journalist and Ph.D student at Griffith University.

Erin specialises in news media depictions of popular culture, but is particularly interested in the way media framing affects public perception and politics.

In her spare time, she runs her own video gaming blog for women at LadyGameBug.