Speaker 1: Already and this is the daily.
Speaker 2: This is the daily, This is the daily. Ohs oh,
Speaker 2: now it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Good morning and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Wednesday,
Speaker 1: the twentieth of March.
Speaker 2: I'm Sam, I'm emma.
Speaker 3: And this week the taxi industry reached a landmark settlement
Speaker 3: with Uber.
Speaker 2: Uber will hand rival Cabby.
Speaker 3: Is one of the biggest compensation payouts in Australian history.
Speaker 3: The tax industry was decimated through the illegal proceedings of Uber,
Speaker 3: and today it can go down as a win. The
Speaker 3: ride sharing giant has agreed to pay two hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy two million dollars in compensation after a five year
Speaker 3: legal battle with taxi and higher car operators. Will unpack
Speaker 3: the case against Uber and the historic deal in today's
Speaker 3: deep dive. But first Sam, what's making headlines.
Speaker 1: The Reserve Bank has left interest rates on hold at
Speaker 1: four point three five percent. This is the third RBA
Speaker 1: decision in a row where the cash rate has stayed
Speaker 1: the same, after interest rates rows for ten consecutive months
Speaker 1: over twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. In a statement,
Speaker 1: the RBA said it's encouraged by easing inflation or rising prices. However,
Speaker 1: it added that other parts of the economy remain quote
Speaker 1: highly uncertain.
Speaker 3: Australia's environment scorecard went down in twenty twenty three. According
Speaker 3: to the latest annual report by the Australian National University,
Speaker 3: Australia scored seven point five out of ten for twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, down from eight point seven the year before.
Speaker 3: The score combines data on the state of the country's weather,
Speaker 3: water and vegetation. The report mentioned that one hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty species were added to the Threatened Species list in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three. It also noted that greenhouse gas emissions
Speaker 3: increased for the first time in five years last year,
Speaker 3: mostly due to the increase in air travel after COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: The Victorian government is being encouraged to introduce pill testing
Speaker 1: by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. It comes
Speaker 1: after last week the Coroner's Court of Victoria found the
Speaker 1: deaths of two men were a result of mixed high
Speaker 1: dose drugs that the men may not have known they
Speaker 1: were taking. The Coroner's Court also recommended that Victoria trial
Speaker 1: a pill testing service similar to the one in the Act.
Speaker 1: The chair of the College of General practitioners said, let's
Speaker 1: do all we can to stop these pointless overdose deaths
Speaker 1: from happening again and again.
Speaker 2: And today's good news.
Speaker 3: Two well known locations in the Byron Bay area of
Speaker 3: New South Wales now have first nation's jewel names. Cape
Speaker 3: Byron will now also have the name Wolgan and Julian
Speaker 3: Rocks will also be called Nothing Gully. Walgan holds importance
Speaker 3: to the aroquoal and Bungjalung people as the area is
Speaker 3: used for gatherings and ceremonies. Nothing Gully is another significant
Speaker 3: site with the traditional name used by the Aroqual people
Speaker 3: meaning the father of the world. The New South Wales
Speaker 3: government said the changes to the names were a nod
Speaker 3: to the cultural significance of these sites.
Speaker 1: So Uber was judi face court this week and they
Speaker 1: were accused of operating unlawfully when it first launched in Australia.
Speaker 1: But those legal proceedings are now not going to go ahead.
Speaker 1: Can you take me through the settlement?
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: So after five years of legal proceedings, more than eight
Speaker 3: thousand taxi and high car operators so that includes drivers,
Speaker 3: business owners, they will receive a share of two hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy two million dollars after reaching a historic settlement
Speaker 3: with Uber.
Speaker 2: It's the first time ever that Uber.
Speaker 3: Has reached this kind of a deal with any taxi
Speaker 3: industry anywhere, and it's it's one of the largest class
Speaker 3: action settlements in Australian history.
Speaker 1: So if we go back to the beginning of those
Speaker 1: proceedings five years ago, what was the original accusation against Uber?
Speaker 3: So, first of all, as I mentioned, this is a
Speaker 3: class action and that's a type of lawsuit where many
Speaker 3: people are represented by one entity. So in this case,
Speaker 3: that entity is a legal firm called Maurice Blackburn. This
Speaker 3: all started in twenty nineteen with one Cabby, a Victorian
Speaker 3: taxi driver and his name is Nikos Adrianachis, and he
Speaker 3: filed the proceeding against Uber in the Victorian Supreme Court
Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen. Then Morris Blackburn got more than eight
Speaker 3: thousand sign ups from other taxi drivers, other people working
Speaker 3: in the taxi and higher car industry who wanted to be.
Speaker 2: Part of this case.
Speaker 1: So what was he arguing.
Speaker 3: So the argument centered around that Uber launched its ride
Speaker 3: sharing service uber x illegally in twenty fourteen, and this
Speaker 3: was in four states, so Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland
Speaker 3: and WA and this Victorian taxi driver along with the
Speaker 3: eight thousand signups and Morris Blackburn claimed that Uber's aggressive
Speaker 3: and illegal launch in Australia caused direct financial losses for
Speaker 3: taxi and higher car workers.
Speaker 2: So the class action was brought for.
Speaker 3: These people to seek compensation from Uber for those damages
Speaker 3: incurred by its unlawful operations.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's twenty nineteen, a class action is launched.
Speaker 1: We've got thousands of taxi drivers and higher car drivers
Speaker 1: claiming that they've lost money because Uber is now in
Speaker 1: the country. I want to go a little deeper on
Speaker 1: this idea of Uber operating, in their words, unlawfully, because
Speaker 1: I think there is a difference between a new competitor
Speaker 1: entering the transport market and that player then acting anti
Speaker 1: competitively or behaving unfairly exactly.
Speaker 3: So it's not illegal for competition in a market. And
Speaker 3: Uber is such a giant in twenty twenty four, it's
Speaker 3: sort of hard to think about this time when they
Speaker 3: were kind of the new guy, uncharted territory and especially
Speaker 3: exactly a startup, and when we think of how it's expanded,
Speaker 3: you know, into our day to day lives in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, Uberpool, Uber eats. But when Uber came to Australia,
Speaker 3: ride sharing was virtually unheard of. So you know, you
Speaker 3: might have had to mate that went on a trip
Speaker 3: to the US and spoke about getting an Uber or
Speaker 3: a Lyft, but in Australia we had nothing like it.
Speaker 3: And then that is compared to a very tightly regulated
Speaker 3: taxi industry.
Speaker 1: So talk me through those regulations then, like why do
Speaker 1: you say it's so tightly regulated.
Speaker 3: So states and territories have their own regulations when it
Speaker 3: comes to taxis and high car companies and they're categorized
Speaker 3: as passenger transport services, but the regulations around them in
Speaker 3: these states and territories are pretty uniform in terms of
Speaker 3: special licenses that are needed, vehicle registration fees, standards for drivers,
Speaker 3: accreditations that drivers have to meet, that.
Speaker 1: Thing, right, So a heavily regulated space. And then if
Speaker 1: we think back to more than a decade ago when
Speaker 1: Uber was really establishing itself in the Australian market, it
Speaker 1: didn't fall within those rules for passenger services and it
Speaker 1: was basically unregulated.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So as you can imagine that really disrupted
Speaker 3: the taxi industry, and I think a lot of listeners
Speaker 3: will remember this time because you had companies and drivers
Speaker 3: who were paying these huge fees for their licenses to
Speaker 3: operate taxis in some states, you know, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of dollars a year for registrations.
Speaker 2: And adhering to all these rules to operate.
Speaker 3: But then when Uber rocks up, you know, anyone with
Speaker 3: a car and a standard driver's license could hypothetically become
Speaker 3: an Uber driver and start making money tomorrow. So the
Speaker 3: main argument from this class action was that this wasn't
Speaker 3: fair and that Uber needed to be regulated, and many
Speaker 3: in the taxi industry wanted it to be subject to
Speaker 3: the same regulations as taxis.
Speaker 2: And higher cars.
Speaker 1: And obviously now think have shifted in the ride share industry.
Speaker 1: There are now standards and regulations that regulate how ride
Speaker 1: sharing operates in Australia. But this class action centers on
Speaker 1: the time before that, and that's when Maurics Blackburn is
Speaker 1: arguing that its clients suffered that financial loss. So even
Speaker 1: though Uber is a massive part of our lives now,
Speaker 1: it is important to kind of place it in that
Speaker 1: context of it's still being a real disruptor, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly, which is why I wanted to use.
Speaker 3: An example from twenty fifteen, and that was when there
Speaker 3: was this government review into competition policy. So basically a
Speaker 3: report that examined certain policies within industries to see if
Speaker 3: they were being regulated fairly. Ride sharing, as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: has completely transformed since then. But if we step back
Speaker 3: in time a little, it does give us an idea
Speaker 3: of the context that this class action came about in.
Speaker 3: So it's twenty fifteen, We'll wearing skinny jeans. Mark Ronson
Speaker 3: and Bruno Mars Uptown Funk is playing in every taxi
Speaker 3: you get.
Speaker 1: In I'm twenty one.
Speaker 3: Paul Blatt Malkop two is in Cinemas Great Film. A
Speaker 3: government report says that the taxi industry is heavily regulated,
Speaker 3: and it gives examples of things like restricting taxi numbers
Speaker 3: in each state where you have to have a license
Speaker 3: to have a taxi, but each state has limits on
Speaker 3: how many licenses it will issue, so that caps the
Speaker 3: amount of cabs that can be in the market to
Speaker 3: service customers. At that time, they said there's a scarcity
Speaker 3: of taxi licenses, as mentioned, some that cost four hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars a year, three hundred thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 3: rules that taxis have to operate three hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: five days a year, that they must accept all reasonable requests,
Speaker 3: and that they must have meters which set fares, and
Speaker 3: they automate tariffs at certain times and on public holidays.
Speaker 1: How did Uber respond to that anger in the early days.
Speaker 3: In those early days, they pretty much pushed back against
Speaker 3: all of these calls for regulations and said that they
Speaker 3: were outdated and that states and territories were sort of
Speaker 3: trying to force it using these old fashioned ideas about
Speaker 3: what passenger services could be. And I think, you know,
Speaker 3: that's kind of a rhetoric we've seen in the gig
Speaker 3: economy all over that you know, there's this old world
Speaker 3: meets the new world, and how do we adapt to that.
Speaker 3: But this twenty fifteen review noted that taxis were being
Speaker 3: disrupted by tech changes, including you know, digital booking apps
Speaker 3: and of course ride sharing. At that time, the Taxi
Speaker 3: Council in Queensland said that taxis and ride sharing were
Speaker 3: substitutable and should therefore be subject to the same rules.
Speaker 3: But Uber argued, and I think this tells US a
Speaker 3: bit more about why it took maybe five years to.
Speaker 2: Reach this decision.
Speaker 3: In the class action, it argued that ride sharing does
Speaker 3: compete with taxis, but that it's not offering taxi services.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you mean by that? Like, that's an
Speaker 1: interesting distinction.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: So ubers are not traditional caps, right, but specifically what
Speaker 3: differentiates them from taxis and higher cars? And this is
Speaker 3: according to Uber's direction d of Public Policy in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: The fundamental differences between taxis and ride sharing are things
Speaker 3: like ride sharing doesn't accept anonymous rides. You can't hail
Speaker 3: an Uber in the street. Ride sharing services don't accept
Speaker 3: any cash.
Speaker 2: It's all digital, it's all in app.
Speaker 3: Ride sharing doesn't have ranks, and ride sharing services are
Speaker 3: on demand, so the user is empowered to open their
Speaker 3: app and to book the service when they want, rather
Speaker 3: than trying to seek a taxi out on the street.
Speaker 1: Okay, got it. And then we got to twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Exactly, And that's when Morris Blackman filed this class action
Speaker 3: arguing that Uber and its vehicles and its drivers were
Speaker 3: able to operate illegally without the proper licenses and accreditations,
Speaker 3: undercutting the taxi industry leading to loss of income.
Speaker 1: And so fast forward a couple of years, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure many, many, many legal bills and Uber and the
Speaker 1: taxis have come to the table and reached a deal.
Speaker 1: But this class action did take a while to get here.
Speaker 1: Do we have a sense of why it took so
Speaker 1: long for them to reach an agreement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't know the specific details. But this is
Speaker 3: a quote from Michael Donnelly, he's one of the lawyers
Speaker 3: at Morris Blackburn, who said Uber fought tooth and nail
Speaker 3: at every point along the way every day for five years.
Speaker 3: So while this settlement was reached, it certainly doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like it was easily done. And as you said, no
Speaker 3: doubt the legal fees on their own would have been astronomical.
Speaker 3: And that's before we even factor in this settlement.
Speaker 1: And so we have a settlement figure. It's two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy two million dollars. That sounds like a lot
Speaker 1: of cash.
Speaker 3: Yep, two hundred and seventy one point eight million dollars
Speaker 3: to be precise.
Speaker 2: And as we said earlier, this class action was due.
Speaker 3: To be heard in court proceedings commencing Tuesday, but at
Speaker 3: the eleventh hour. For whatever reason, Uber decided they didn't
Speaker 3: want to go through with that process. So a deal
Speaker 3: was made literally the day before or as far as
Speaker 3: we can tell. And one that Donnelly from Morris Blackburn said,
Speaker 3: quote finally put real money back into the accounts of
Speaker 3: people who've been devastated by Uber.
Speaker 1: And so hypothetically it should be that there's a pot
Speaker 1: of money two hundred and seventy two million that's split
Speaker 1: up between it the eight thousand people in the case.
Speaker 1: Is that how it's going to play out.
Speaker 3: So it's not quite as cut and dry. First off,
Speaker 3: Morth Blackburn has this agreement with a group called Harbor
Speaker 3: Fund and they have paid a proportion of the legal
Speaker 3: costs of the case over the last five years in
Speaker 3: exchange for a funding commission. Now that's somewhere between twenty
Speaker 3: five to thirty percent of this settlement, so it's also.
Speaker 2: Entitled to recover it's legal costs. And right off the.
Speaker 3: Bat, we're looking at, you know, a minimum of sixty
Speaker 3: eight million dollars for that fund.
Speaker 1: Before we even get to the taxi drivers exactly. And
Speaker 1: then of course the law firm will take a commission
Speaker 1: and they normally take a couple of percent of the
Speaker 1: final settlement and then finally the rest of the settlement
Speaker 1: will go to the drivers and taxi operators. So we're
Speaker 1: talking really then about tens of thousands of dollars each,
Speaker 1: not millions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is still the fifth largest class action
Speaker 3: settlement in Australian history. And you know, eight thousand people
Speaker 3: participating or eight thousand people signing up to a class action,
Speaker 3: that is a huge number of people. You know, we
Speaker 3: see class actions with tens or hundreds of people. This
Speaker 3: is pretty significant. So they could still end up with
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of dollars each. And Morris Blackburn said
Speaker 3: it was proud its team held a major organization to
Speaker 3: account for inflicting what it called mass wrongs on people.
Speaker 1: And have we heard from Uber since the settlement.
Speaker 3: We did get a statement from Uber this week which
Speaker 3: said the platform is now regulated in every state and territory,
Speaker 3: which kind of speaks to that shift in ride sharing
Speaker 3: that we mentioned earlier, and it said that since twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: it's made significant contributions into various state level taxi compensation schemes.
Speaker 3: With the proposed settlement quote, we put these legacy issues
Speaker 3: FIR in our past, So it seems like that's basically
Speaker 3: all we're going to hear from Uber. They don't sound
Speaker 3: very interested in going back into trudging all of that
Speaker 3: up again.
Speaker 1: Is that amount of money going to hurt them?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: I looked into this because two hundred and seventy two
Speaker 3: million dollars sounds like a lot of money.
Speaker 2: But Uber is a global.
Speaker 3: Company, as we know, with revenue streams from major countries
Speaker 3: around the world, and not just from ride sharing anymore.
Speaker 3: They've diversified. Uber Eats is its own beast. Its global
Speaker 3: revenue for twenty twenty three was over fifteen billion Australian dollars,
Speaker 3: so nine point nine USD. So you've got to think
Speaker 3: two hundred and seventy two mel will hurt its Australian
Speaker 3: operations significantly.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a multinational corporation.
Speaker 3: So you know, while these proceedings have wrapped up, and
Speaker 3: I'm sure Uber's very relieved that it's over, whether or
Speaker 3: not it means a lot for their bottom line, we'll
Speaker 3: kind of have to wait and see.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing that Uber will be watching now is
Speaker 1: if taxi drivers in other trees want to emulate a
Speaker 1: similar proceeding and a similar lawsuit, and then it can
Speaker 1: start really adding up fuber exactly.
Speaker 3: And you've got to wonder if negotiating that out of
Speaker 3: court settlement has something to do with avoiding the public
Speaker 3: interest of court hearings having that information out there, hearing
Speaker 3: the defense hearing from the Cabby's.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we'll see if any other countries are watching.
Speaker 1: Very interesting, Emma, thank you five stars for you, and
Speaker 1: maybe I'll add the tip.
Speaker 2: A bottle of water and some mince for you.
Speaker 1: Sam. Thank you so much and thank you for joining
Speaker 1: us on the Daily os today. If you enjoyed that episode,
Speaker 1: let us know. If you're in Spotify, you can leave
Speaker 1: a review or a comment, and you can leave a
Speaker 1: rating if you're on Apple. We'll be back again in
Speaker 1: your ears tomorrow morning. Until then, have a great date.
Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Runda
Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcoutin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and tourist
Speaker 1: in Ireland and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present,