Cultural Tourism and Mini Bus Tours Victoria and Tasmania Australia

13/07/2018

www.culturaltourismvictoria.com

17/07/2016

30/12/2015

Poeti has a duty of care, not only to the licensed taxi driver who pays huge fees to be legal on the road but to the client. Uber is using private cars not for hire and drive but for hire and reward. Uber MUST be legislated in transport legislation. It cant be both hire and drive and hire and reward at the same time. There is no middle line on this issue. My question is this: What happens if an accident happens with a Uber driver in there private car, and their 'client' is seriously injured or at worse, killed? Will the private insurance company cover for the driver who is working for hire and reward and in an industry that is not regulated in legislation? Who is going to pay for damages? Minister Poeti cant keep fumbling around on this serious issue and ignore a transport operation whose sole objective is hire and reward but pretends to not be. Uber is trying to blur the boundary between private and public usage. It is blantant that Uber is commercial. It is not just rules that you need, you MUST have legislation that includes a new player on the market. Uber as another taxi company MUST also obtain licensing like all the other taxi businesses. Because that is what Uber is, a neoliberal taxi company that wants to undercut the competition because it currently can. Nobody is paying for licensing, having to have mandatory safety inspections, nor paying for a different bracket of insurance etc. That is why we have governments - to ensure the proper legistation and regulations and just as importantly, the safety of their citizenry.

23/12/2015

Thank you to all for liking our page. We hope to have Penelope Nichol included in the history books as the pioneer of cultural tourism and the 1st license holder for mini buses in Australia. She also helped change the transport law to prevent the unlicensed operators like Uber and include ALL vehicles used for hire and reward in transport legislation. Once her license was protected under law the thieving Victorian Government including Tourism Victoria stole EVERYTHING, did not grant her a renewal of her transport license TO 24.

12/12/2015

Penelope had the same problem - unregulated competitors and the Government turned a blind eye, which led to the ultimate demise of Licence TO 24 - a deliberate action by the Government to thieve the intellectual rights of Madame Nichol - hence Cultural Tourism and subsequent tourism policies directly attributed to the 1st cultural tourism licence TO24, Uber too are illegal as they too are unregulated and dangerous using a neo-liberal model of profit before people. http://citypaper.net/uberdriver/

I drove a hundred rides for UberX to fact-check whether a middle-of-the-pack driver can make $90,000 a year. This is what I...

14/09/2015

have a look at the new website:
www.culturaltourismvictoria.com

13/05/2015

Original 1971 brochure for cultural tours in a minibus. The first time a mini-bus is used as a commercial passenger vehicle in Australia! Penelope Nichol's visionary work.

13/05/2015

The original itinerary for mini-bus tours 1971 - which included art galleries, museums, historical architecture, music, theatre, restaurants and much more and the rip-off copy from from Tourism Victoria 2011

13/05/2015

Have a look at this official Victorian Website and Cultural Tourism is featured - Penelope Nichol's vision! And she still has not been recognised!

http://creative.vic.gov.au/Research_Resources/Cultural_Data/Snapshots/Cultural_Tourism

11/05/2015

Dear Mr Harry,
Thank you for your letter dated 14th April 2015 to my son Louis Nichol.
In as much as it would be important to apply for an award to Order of Australia, it would be better done with the support of Victorian Tourism. To finally have the backing of the peak tourism organisation that formally acknowledged the truth that Penelope Nichol was the pioneer in the introduction of cultural tourism to Victoria is of the utmost importance. An acknowledgment from your organisation would go a long way to rectify the absence of Madame Nichol’s extraordinary contribution to tourism and transport – ie minibuses and the licencing for this. I am sure that you are aware that cultural tourism in its complexity, is now standard practice and that many Victorian tourist operators should thank the pioneering work of Madame Nichol.
I was disappointed with your response to my son, Louis, as you avoided acknowledging Mrs Nichol’s pioneering contribution to tourism. I also want to correct you that you said that Madame Nichol’s contribution started in the 1980’s when in fact she was issued with a license for mini-bus cultural tours in 1971, a good ten years earlier.
In as much as my mother could be nominated for a Victorian Tourism award, as you had suggested, she does not fit the criteria for a person who is currently working in the industry. Why should she compete with an industry that she contributed to and that operators model themselves on her work? Furthermore, I have requested that a special award be given to her, and in this case posthumously, as she died on the 30th March of this year. She pioneered the following areas:
1. Introduction of Cultural Tourism to the State of Victoria and Tasmania 1971
2. A new category of commercial transport, mini buses
3. A new category of transport license - 1st person to use a commercial passenger vehicle - minibus
4. Recified transport legisilation to accommodate mini-buses from illegal non-regulated hire and drive minibuses. (1980)
In your capacity as the Director of Tourism Victoria, why are you not able to actively agitate on behalf of the pioneer of cultural tourism Madame Nichol, and to ensure that she is given her long due public award and with the support of the peak Victorian tourist organisation as this is an outstanding issue.
Unfortunately your letter seems to distance yourself from my mother's work despite your enthusiasm to nominate her for awards. How can you allow this when the Victorian tourism policies and practices are directly influenced by my mother's visionary work? Not once in your letter did you acknowledged the work of my mother despite having seen the evidence of this on the website: www.culturaltourismvictoria.com
Therefore, I would ask that the most decent thing to do is to ensure to create a new and special award for Madame Nichol and something that is separate from being in a competition. She should not be competing against anyone. I think that reasons are obvious.
It is the most decent thing to do by yourself in your capacity as Director of Tourism Victoria to speak with the Minister of Tourism regarding an award to my mother. Why should we feel as though we are beggars to the tourism complex that my mother had established. My mother should be celebrated, she should not be made invisible nor an outsider. Without your direct intervention, the idea of trying to get recognised is like saying that Madame Nichol is an impostor, which she is not.
In as much as the Order of Australia would be a legitimate avenue to proceed down, it is for both the Tourism Victoria and my family to work together on a specific tourism award. We would expect nothing less!

Yours sincerely,

Simone Nichol

Penelope Nichol pioneer in the introduction of Cultural Tourism to Victoria and Tasmania

10/05/2015

Penelope's work in addressing deficiencies in Transport legislation.Think Uber!

10/05/2015

Most recent correspondence regarding recognition for Penelope's pioneering work! Extremely disappointed!

22/04/2015

Letter from Bob Annells, director of Tourism Victoria 1995

21/04/2015

Wild wonderful days in Fitzroy! with Patrick Alexander, mamam and myself with my effigy of Mamam to be used as a protest outside the Victorian Parliament for natural justice re: license TO 24

21/04/2015

the beginnings of the cultural tourism industry in Australia

19/04/2015

Announcing the passing of Penelope into eternal life 30 -3-15. She was an extremely courageous and feisty person, a person who defended those who were less fortunate than herself. She had an extremely keen intellect and loved the arts having pioneered cultural tourism in Australia in the 1970's. She also pioneered a new form of commercial transport, that of mini-buses being the 1st license holder (1971), thus creating a new category of commercial vehicle. She also changed State legislation in order to address the absence of regulation around her new category of license. Penelope comes from a very long line of Quebec and Canadian judges, (via the Taschereau family) 2 of whom became Chief Justices of Canadian Supreme Court.

27/11/2014

San Francisco-based Uber, which serves more than 200 cities worldwide, rolled into town about a year ago, and seemed innocuous at first, recruiting taxi drivers to pick up passengers using its app. Users can see where the nearest taxis are located, hail them and pay, all through their smartphones.

However, Uber’s newer service, Uber X, which began earlier this month, is the real threat to the industry. While Uber uses already-licensed cabbies, Uber X is staffed with non-professional drivers using their own personal cars, charging customers an average 30 per cent discount on traditional cab fares.
Uber claims to be safer for riders because the company checks all its drivers’ criminal records and driving records (something the province will only start to do on Dec. 1), and it can track its customers’ movements by GPS. Any complaints or problems can be registered with the company instantly through the app.

Taxi drivers are crying foul, saying Uber X drivers aren’t regulated, its cars aren’t inspected and drivers don’t have to take any courses or pay for an expensive licence (which can cost upward of $200,000).

“It’s a lot of people who are retired or do it part time, and they don’t care if they just make $50 in a day, but it takes away money from us,” said Farid Bellil, 56, who has be driving cabs in Montreal for nearly 30 years.

“The threat posed by Uber could also affect the lucrative reselling market for taxi driver’s licences. Because there is a limited number available, many purchase the licences and either rent them out as a source of income, or hold on to them as an investment, because their prices have been steadily rising. Now valued at around $200,000, Bellil fears the licences will plummet if Uber X takes hold, because driving a cab will be a less lucrative job than it currently is. Roy said, however no matter how much his industry changes, Uber X still has a huge cost advantage because it doesn’t use licensed drivers.

“I don’t have a problem with Uber,” Roy said. “But we’d like the company to follow the rules so we can compete on a level playing field.”


Jason Magder, Montreal Gazette
More from Jason Magder, Montreal Gazette
Published on: November 24, 2014 |