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Ride-booking company Uber is to be fully accredited in South Australia, and new laws are to be introduced to punish unaccredited services.
The Uber-X service had been operating in SA since last year, but without a licence, meaning drivers have been breaking the law.
The accreditation moves announced by the SA Government have been accompanied by raft of new laws to be introduced later this year.
They include demerit points, licence suspensions or disqualifications for driving or providing a passenger transport service without appropriate accreditation and enabling a court to order the recovery of any profits obtained that way.
Transport department inspectors have detected 321 offences under current laws since June 2016.
The Government has also announced plans for a $1 levy on all paid-for passenger transport rides, including those by taxis and chauffeur vehicles — which has been criticised by both Uber and the taxi industry.
That will, among other things, contribute to compensation payments to taxi licence holders.
"The State Government has worked hard to negotiate a balance between the desire for more choice, better quality of service, improved working conditions and the sustainability of existing operators and investors," Transport Minister Stephen Mullighan said.
Uber South Australia general manager Tom White said in a statement the ride-booking service was pleased to be finalising its accreditation after close consultation with the State Government.
"This is an important step forward that will provide certainty for more than 2,000 Uber driver partners who rely on ride sharing to earn some extra money," he said.
Mr White said the company would continue to work closely with the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure to implement the widespread reforms, despite its reservations around the passenger levy.
"While we don't believe a new and permanent tax on South Australian transport is justified, we intend to comply with our requirements as an accredited booking service," he said.
While Uber has agreed to become accredited, it has done so on the basis the State Government review its compulsory third party insurance premiums, something the Government has vowed to look into by the end of the year.
Photo:
ATLOA members protest at Parliament House in Adelaide on Friday. (ABC News: Sowaibah Hanifie)
Adelaide Taxi Licence Owners Association (ATLOA) secretary Kim Woolford said cab drivers and licence plate owners had taken a big hit since ride-booking services entered the market.
"This is very hard for people in the taxi industry who work all their lives to create a super fund for themselves through their taxi licences and it's just been eroded overnight with this announcement," he said.
"It's destroyed families, some people just have no way of getting any super back, they've lost their livelihoods."
Mr Woolford said taxi driver plate values had more than halved in the past two years.
"The value of the plates is worth very little in comparison to what they were two years ago, they've gone down from over $400,000, now we can't even sell them, but the average price these days is about $150,000."
Mr Woolford said Uber's accreditation still did not put the service on a level playing field with cab drivers.
He said he doubted Uber would actually abide by the accreditation rules and questioned the Government's ability to keep them compliant.
"There's no way of them [State Government] making them compliant, Uber just flout the rules, you show me an Uber car, you can't recognise the car, it's not identifiable like a taxi," he said.
"It's up to the compliance officers to actually catch them, and then the courts to go through and apply the fine."
Mr Woolford acknowledged the $1 levy, but said the compensation pay-outs did not go far enough.
"It's not going to go along way, because it's only a short-term measure in comparison to what we've lost its very small."
Other planned changes include a halving of the maximum EFTPOS and credit card fee for passenger transport services from 10 per cent to 5 per cent.
Topics: regulation, parliament, state-parliament, government-and-politics, road-transport, industry, sa, australia
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