Is this a greedy investor??? we interviewed for Moonee Valley Leader and made the front page....we need to keep our plight in the media constantly. TWO Moonee Valley women have begun a movement to campaign against the state government’s radical taxi reforms. See your ad here Sandy Spanos and Sidia Benedetto have established the Victorian Taxi Families group to challenge new taxi legislation passed by Parliament on June 27. They led hundreds of fellow wives and children of taxi operators who flooded the steps of Parliament House on Friday before marching to Victorian Transport Minister Terry Mulder’s office in Burke Street. Taxi licences have always been heavily restricted and sold for up to $525,000. Under the new reforms, from July 1 next year, they will be available to anyone to rent for $22,000 a year, indexed to the consumer price index. Ms Spanos, whose husband Vassilios paid more than $125,000 for a taxi licence in 1993, said the reforms would destroy a lifetime of work. She said she and her husband had worked full time for the past 30 years and used her superannuation to pay off their modest home in East Keilor. But now the couple will be forced to go on the aged pension. “Our lives have been ripped to pieces,” she said. “We don’t have savings. This licence was the money we were going to use in retirement. “We have come from humble beginnings and we’ve worked hard all our lives. At 55, I’m not an age where I can come back from this financially. We will become destitute.” Ms Spanos said her husband still worked every Friday and Saturday from 3pm-5am, making about $8 an hour. Ms Benedetto’s husband, Carmelo, spent almost $400,000 on two taxi licences between 1991 and 1995. He owes the bank almost $500,000 and the family may lose their home. “It’s destroying marriages and destroying families,” Ms Benedetto said. “Licence-holders and operators are being portrayed as greedy investors when many are in debt or have poured their life savings into their businesses and will have nothing to show for it.” The state government commissioned an inquiry into the industry last year after a Transport Department survey found fewer than 60 per cent of customers felt safe or satisfied with taxis. The inquiry, headed by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Professor Allan Fels, made 145 recommendations, including that the cost of licences be slashed and restricted to five years. Opposition amendments to proposed reforms, including compensation for current licence-holders, were rejected. But Mr Mulder said the reforms put customers and drivers first and would revive the industry and restore public confidence. “They will provide customers with higher- quality, more reliable and safer services and ensure drivers are properly remunerated, trained and knowledgeable,” he said. See your ad here “While we have taken account of the interests of licence-holders, we make no apology for the fact these reforms put customers first.” Ms Spanos said the women were planning a protest at Melbourne Airport at the beginning of August. “We will hold a protest every month until the government takes notice,” she said. “What the government has done is completely unethical. I will fight to my last breath for my husband and my
Posted on: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 07:04:58 +0000
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