We Asked an Expert if Uber in Canberra Will Save Australian Taxpayers Money?

If you're a pollie you can charge hell of a lot of travel to the taxpayer, as long as it's under 'official business.' Current rules allowed Bronwyn Bishop to take a helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong despite the journey being just under an hour by car—and as Turnbull showed last week—easily achievable by train. Then there was Nick Xenephon and his miniature BMW.

But the Australian political cycle is a strange beast, and given another coup is still taking centre stage, we're not really concentrating on parliamentary privilege right now. However, with the introduction of Uber to Canberra's master-planned streets, we got thinking about whether the public service and politicians will use it. And if so, would that save us money?

To understand how and what difference Uber could make on public finances, we had a chat to Professor John Wanna, the Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration at ANU.

VICE: Hi John. Malcolm Turnbull has made a lot of noise about wanting to be the government of "the 21st century". He said that disruptive technology will be our friend if we're "agile and smart enough to take advantage of it." Would an early adoption of Uber serve his government well?
John Wanna: I think so. If they ban them from using Uber or reduce options to use it, it would be a bad look and go against his current mantra. Encouraging members of the public service to look at new disruptive technologies—as long as there's some benefit for the public in it—would be great for the Commonwealth of state governments to adopt. Keep in mind that the states, particularly NSW and Victoria, have the largest public services in the country.

Right. So how exactly does the public service get around now?
Well most public servants will drive to work or take some form of public transport, so usually how they get around is their own business. But we're quite different from other Westminster parliamentary public services in that quite a lot of them have government-provided cars as part their salary packages, or because of their level of executive appointment. There's also the "ComCar" which is a group of about 150 cars at various locations in Australia that largely ferry parliamentarians and their staffers from airports to their electorate base, or to parliament when they're attending.

At the moment it's very complicated because politicians get various types of allowances. As far as I can tell, they've got a fairly unlimited travel allowance for official business. They could travel two or three times everyday as long as it's on parliamentary business. Look at Bronwyn Bishop and the helicopter—no one could stop her. Of course the media scandal embarrassed her, but our politicians can make these choices. I mean, Turnbull can get on a public bus or take a chauffeured limousine in the Commonwealth fleet. The choice is his at that point in time.

How much of a percentagerelies on taxis?
Public servants do use taxis a lot in our capital cities where parking is a premium, because it's much easier to catch a cab to go somewhere than it is to find a park—and it'll be expensive anyway. A cab is often the cheaper and more convenient way anyway, because you get from door to door. Uber could replace that if the service was available when politicians most needed it.

If the taxi service is convenient but if it's more expensive than Uber, they could compete with taxis and potentially save the government some money. But if there was a large demand for it from the public service, would there be enough Uber drivers driving around when they wanted it?

It's easy to forget about these practical issues when as a user, when all you want is a ridiculously cheap fare (and maybe some free water), but what other issues are there for public servants who might make the switch?
If an Uber had a crash or if a servant got injured getting out of a cab, I'm not so sure they'd be covered with workers' compensation. See, if the department sends out an official on official business and the official uses a licenced taxi, they'd be covered for any work-related injuries.

There are a whole series of things which go with the taxi licence plate, like vehicle inspections and making sure drivers don't drink or use drugs at all. I think that would make public servants want to stay with taxis even though they're a bit more expensive. They'd be a bit more certain that if anything happened to them they'd be fully covered. So I think you'd have a test case in the courts to see if they're entitled to work cover in an Uber.

So is Uber the logical choice for public servants that it is for us normal people?
At Melbourne Airport there's quite a lot of limousine drivers and public servants quite like that because you get a fixed price. Public servants will largely do what is convenient to them at the time.

And you've got to keep in mind that public servants are not price-sensitive—they're not paying the bill. The public service's transport costs just go into the system, and the public accounts department pay whatever the bill is. It doesn't operate on a notion of "it costs you money."

So I guess that's a "no" then. Thanks.

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