Country hire car licences

The Victorian Taxi Directorate (VTD) has made changes to licensing arrangements for metropolitan and country hire cars, including the formalisation of the issue fee for country hire car licences.

The VTD has determined that places outside the greater Melbourne region (defined using boundaries consistent with the metropolitan and outer suburban taxi zones) will be a specified area for the purposes of issuing country hire car licences.

The alignment of the metropolitan hire car boundary with the greater Melbourne taxi service area (metropolitan and outer suburban taxi zones) provides greater parity in the issue process for country taxi and country hire car licences. This means that the VTD is required to determine whether the issue of either of these licence types is in the public interest.

On 24 September 2009, the Minister for Public Transport determined that the country hire car licence fee is $20,500 (plus GST), as recommended by the Economic and Sustainable Development Committee. Country hire car licences may be issued for this fee, subject to approval of an application being deemed to be in the public interest.

There are licence holders with operating rights in the metropolitan area but with an operational address outside the recently gazetted greater Melbourne area. As part of the transitional arrangements these licence holders will retain there existing operating conditions and will be able to continue to operate within the metropolitan zone.

For those licence holders wishing to transfer the licence or to change the operational address applicable to their vehicle, their metropolitan operating rights will only be permitted to be retained with the licence if the proposed operational address is within the metropolitan hire car area.

Information on the country hire car boundary and licence fee has been published in the Government Gazette (PDF, 230KB, 2 pp.).