Editorial: Auckland cab chaos is a bad look

Opinion

You don't need to be very old to remember the days before they began deregulating everything in sight.

The Lange Labour government started it but the Nats, reinstalled in 1990, carried on the good work with a vigour the put the Rogergnomes to shame.

What a brave new world they promised: the price of electricity, cooled by the breezes of competition in a free market, would plummet, they said; putting smart people with MBAs and European cars in charge would make our health system the sleek, efficient envy of the world, they promised; and wait until you see what we do to the taxi business.

Well, we've waited and we've seen. And while we've been waiting, we've sat in dodgy cars whose names we didn't recognise and tried to explain to the driver through a language barrier where Dominion Rd is.

This week a new scheme was announced to tidy up the taxis on the streets of Auckland.

The pretext for the move, initiated by Auckland City's transport committee, is the Rugby World Cup: we wouldn't want news to get out that, at certain times of the day in some parts of the city, the city can look like some Third World backwater as taxis double-park and their drivers jostle for custom from patrons leaving bars and nightclubs.

The new permit scheme is the latest in a series of attempts over the past decade to tame the rogue operators who emerged in the wake of deregulation in 1989. It will use a demerit points system, and penalties will apply to whole fleets and not just individual drivers - a clever design which uses peer pressure to bring bad drivers into line.

But like any scheme it will be only as good as its enforcement. The Taxi Federation, which predicted the chaos that would follow deregulation, argues fairly that the authorities don't have the "on-road presence" to give the laws teeth.

The same holds true for the new regime. But it is worth a try. We would not want the world to get the idea two years from now that anyone with a clapped out Jap import and a cellphone can be a taxi driver in New Zealand.