NSW Government $110,000+ fine threat from Minister Jo Haylen’s Transport Department – nice one!
Today, Monday 15th April 2024, Nature Trail’s Tour Director received an out-of-the blue a phone at 1:38pm from someone called Kimberley Warren. She was supposedly from the NSW Government’s Department of Transport sub-department, bureaucratically entitled ‘Point to Point Transport Commission‘.
That phone call was then quickly followed up same day at time stamp 2:21pm, within a readied response less than an hour later from the same agent Kimberley Warren.
Such fast turnaround points to it being a prepared template email by the NSW Government’s outsourced debt collector; from personal experience, with the same spots and instant dismissive accusatory malice conveyed as that of Service NSW unjustifiably toward Nature Trail over the past year.
Here’s that email threat we copped… (Other tour operators beware!)
Email received 15th April 2024:
“Good Afternoon Steven,
It has been brought to the attention of The Point to Point Transport Commission that you are operating passenger services in Blue Mountains NSW. In NSW, Point to Point transport is any passenger service in a vehicle (other than a bus) that can take customers on the route they choose, at a time that suits them, for a fare. This includes taxis, limousines, rideshare services, airport transfers and other hire vehicles.
If you choose not to become authorised as a Booking Service provider, you will need to cease offering & advertising passenger services in Blue Mountains.
Penalties of up to $110,000 apply for anyone providing an unauthorised taxi or booking service, while drivers will face penalties if they take bookings or carry out passenger services from unauthorised service providers. Penalties are much higher for second or subsequent offences.
Please see below for links to our website and the current legislation and regulation.
As discussed in our phone call this afternoon you are not permitted to advertise these services if you are not an authorised booking service provider. Also discussed, I will view your website on 19 April 2024 in order to confirm that all advertising has been removed.
https://www.pointtopoint.nsw.gov.au/
https://www.pointtopoint.nsw.gov.au/what-a-service-provider/become-an-authorised-service-provider
https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/sl-2017-0424
https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act-2016-034
Yours Sincerely
Kimberley Warren
Service & Industry Liaison Officer
Operations
NSW Point to Point Transport Commission
ref:!00D6F01PKI2.!5002t0WShbS:ref”
OUR INITIAL REACTIVE THOUGHT:
So, nice one, NOT!
FACT: Nature Trail does not ever charge fares to transfer its guests to a tour start and finish location. It never has and never will.
Instead, we offer up our privately registered tour vehicle as a courtesy car, just as the exclusive end of accommodation hotels do – i.e. those flash new BMWs and Mercedes luxury cars parked in the hotel front drive forecourt.
It’s the same as how Nature Trail offers its guests courtesy Wi-Fi and bottled drinking water for convenience and safety respectively.
So, is this shameful NSW Government next intending to introduce some ‘cash-grap’ licensing regime as well to tour operators offering courtesy Wi-Fi and bottled drinking water? Is the NSW Government so starved for revenue as to stoop to target fledgling micro businesses such as ourselves?
Unbelievable!
This especially after all the other governmental lockdown denial of business trading in our Blue Mountains.
Governmental bureaucracy subsists in an ignorant pompous vacuous bubble with a idealistic naive perception that bottomless guaranteed taxpayer revenue will endure forever.
Governmental fairyland! There won’t be any more taxpayers left if government dictats of lockdowns and persecution of private enterprise persists like this.
So, our immediate rebuttal email reply – timestamped 4:02pm:
(Typos corrected)
Dear Ms Warren,
I confirm receipt of your phone call to me today from number 02-8650 1783 at 1:38pm from this Transport for NSW subdepartment and your email follow up below.
Frankly, I thought your call may have been another spam call, but actually I interpret it as indeed more ‘NSW Government spam’, so following on from the likes of Service NSW and its ongoing threatening behaviour toward me over the past year.
I trust that fake ‘audit’ of its Micro Business Grants recipients has finally been ended permanently.
Your accusations toward me and tour business Nature Trail are false and unfounded.
Neither has either had a tour vehicle offered as a Point-to-Point transport for fare paying passengers – not as a taxi, limousine, ride-share service, airport transfer or other hire vehicle.
Rather it has always been registered as a private vehicle and offered at no charge as a Probono courtesy transfer for guests on hiking tours. It saves them driving themselves or walking along the roadside to get to our tour departure location.
Back before all the NSW Government lockdowns staring with its multiple bushfire emergency declarations in 2019, Nature Trail sought to trial the NSW Government’s then new P2P regime by registering just in case business opportunities presented along these lines.
They never did. I cancelled the P2P registration pleading genuine financial hardship.
Nature Trail has not had one paying guest since due to the NSW Government’s wall to wall socio-economic lockdowns effectively denying tourism visitation to the Blue Mountains region.
The Nature Trail website was made dormant in early 2020 during the start of the subsequent East Coast Low deluges and landslips and then the wall-to-wall NSW Government’s pandemic lockdowns.
Do not threaten me with a $110,000 penalty and more!
As discussed with you in your out-of-the-blue phone call to me today, I have immediately added a bold clause to the Nature Trail website to the effect that Nature Trail cannot currently use its vehicle due to your specific intimidating threat to me.
Read this: https://naturetrail.com.au/
This clause overrides all offers of tours involving a vehicle. It is one step from not having a tour operation. I hope you are happy with yourself in your cosy public servant office with no idea about helping small business like mine get back on their feet.
Leave me alone!
If you further threaten me and my tour business that I must take down Nature Trail’s website, then I construe this as anti-small business prejudice.
I am following your legal threat of bankrupting-level fines up with political and public action about this, including Internet coverage via the Nature Trail blog ‘Mountains Drums’.
You have picked on the wrong person, Ms Warren.
I herein copy in the office of my NSW local member for Blue Mountains, The Hon Trish Doyle MP, as well as my solicitor.
Sincerely,
Steve
Tour Director