Canberran Phil Button is calling on fellow owners of taxi plates to fight back on deregulation of the industry using the only weapon they have – control of Aerial's telephone dispatch system.
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Mr Button is among the 170 owners of taxi plates whose investment has taken a hit with the arrival of Uber and the deregulation of the industry this month.
Like others, Mr Button bought his plates as a retirement plan. He bought his first plate for $150,000 in 1988 (since sold) and his second in the early 1990s for $220,000. He drove taxis for 10 years to pay off the first investment, and since he retired has lived off his income from leasing the plate out for about $21,600 a year.
That is now in peril and Mr Button and other owners say the government should compensate them.
The government also leases plates directly to taxi operators. With deregulation this month, it slashed the prices for its plates from $20,000 a year to $10,000 a year, and in a year's time will cut the price again, to just $5000 a year. Owners are worried that operators will no longer lease plates off them at $20,000 a year, but will lease from the government instead, at much reduced prices.
Mr Button says that would wipe out his income.
"We are self-funded retirees who have just got this meagre amount. The moment it goes we'd have to apply for a pension," he says. "I'm like those other people who have bought taxi plates on the basis they could work the taxi plates and retire with them and that would be their superannuation. And that's all melted into nothing."
Mr Button is calling on fellow plate owners to join a campaign to shut out operators who take on the new, cheaper government leases – matching the government's "off-hand" approach with a "bloody-minded" response of their own.
"What I'm saying clearly is the one thing we do own is the base radio dispatch system," he said. "What we should be doing as a fight back against this bloody-minded approach of [Chief Minister Andrew] Barr's is to say, all these people who rush off to take up a government lease should have an increase in base fees."
He suggests that operators who lease plates at $10,000 a year from the government should pay an extra $10,000 to Aerial in fees to access the dispatch system, which would put them back on the same financial footing as before deregulation. Operators already pay $24,000 in fees to Aerial, as well as the lease fees of about $20,000 year to owners.
Mr Button said taxi owners had invested in the dispatch system over years, upgrading and modernising it, and should use it to their advantage now.
"The approach is now to show that we've got something of value here that he didn't think about," Mr Button said.
But Aerial managing director Mark Bramston rejected the idea.
"We would completely reject Aerial doing anything like that because it would be against the law. The ACCC would see that as unreasonable use of any power," he said.
Aerial was working through the legislation and waiting for regulations before deciding its next step.
Mr Button said operators should think twice before "rushing out" to swap perpetual leases for cheaper government plates.
"I want to put a quietener on the industry so as not have mayhem prevail, where people just willy nilly say I'm giving up this lease to take up another one over there."
