Anyone who has stood on a Melbourne kerb at midnight and watched a taxi look them over and drive off will be interested in what changes tomorrow. From Saturday 1 August, unlawfully refusing to take a passenger becomes a formal offence for drivers of unbooked taxis — and it counts towards losing their licence to drive one.
The change comes from Safe Transport Victoria, the state's transport safety regulator, as the last instalment of a long-running overhaul of the commercial passenger vehicle industry. A service refusal offence will apply to drivers providing unbooked services unless an exception applies.
There are genuine exceptions, and they matter. The regulator lists "safety concerns, threatening or abusive behaviour, concerns about payment, or other circumstances set out in the regulations." A driver who declines a fare because a passenger is aggressive or refuses to pay is not the target here. A driver who simply does not fancy the destination is.
The teeth come from the two-strikes rule, which started on 1 July. Under it, a driver found guilty of two or more listed offences within 10 years can have their driver accreditation cancelled — the accreditation being the thing that lets them carry passengers for money at all. Service refusal joins that list from Saturday.
The other offences already on it sketch a familiar list of complaints: charging excessive fares on unbooked trips, excessive payment surcharges, problems with fare devices, refusing to hand over a receipt — and refusing to carry an assistance animal.
That last one is the quiet heart of these reforms. Refusal to take a guide dog or other assistance animal has long been one of the most common complaints from passengers with disability, and it now sits alongside overcharging as something that can end a driving career rather than simply generate a complaint that goes nowhere.
Reporting is being widened to match. Also from 1 August, the incidents operators must notify the regulator about expand to cover complaints about overcharging, non-cash payment surcharges, assistance animal refusals, service refusals, and sexual assault, sexual harassment, assault, threats or intimidation.
One important limit: this applies to unbooked services — the rank-and-hail trips where you flag a car down or take one from a rank. Rides booked in advance through a booking service provider, including rideshare apps, sit under a different set of rules.
Unbooked vehicles also picked up tighter surveillance requirements on 1 July, including audio recording capability and footage retention stretched out to 14 days, up from 72 hours — which, in practice, means a disputed refusal or fare has a far longer window in which the evidence still exists.
