‘I know what it is to be racially vilified,’ says Charles, who wants roundtable meeting with police, taxi drivers and union to discuss ‘this chronic behaviour’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Indigenous actor Uncle Jack Charles is calling for taxi drivers to be given cultural training after he was again refused service by Melbourne cabs, saying, “I know what it is to be racially vilified.”

Charles, a Bunurong man whose traditional land covers Melbourne’s south-east and parts of the CBD, said he was turned away by two drivers at the Flinders Street station taxi rank on Wednesday afternoon, before the third driver in the queue agreed to take him.

It follows a high-profile incident in October during which the 72-year-old Cleverman star was refused a taxi twice in one week, first while leaving the Victorian branch of the Australian of the Year awards ceremony, where he was named Victoria’s Senior Australian of the Year, and later at Melbourne airport.

Charles said the latest incident occurred when he was showing a friend some Aboriginal sites around Melbourne.

“(My friend) jumped in the front and I went to jump in the back,” Charles said. “Well, I couldn’t jump in the back because he started to drive off, said he had knocked off.

“I knew what it was, immediately what it was, because you get to know what it is to be racially vilified.”

Another driver gave the same story, before the third accepted the fare.

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Charles said he had come to expect difficulty dealing with taxi drivers, but said the experience was still embarrassing and upsetting.

He no longer tried to hail cabs himself because drivers either don’t stop or drive away as soon as they see him. Instead, he said, he asks “a complete stranger, a whitefella, to flag a taxi down for me and then say it’s for me”.

Instead of filing a complaint against specific drivers, Charles is petitioning for a roundtable meeting with police, senior taxi officials, drivers and union representatives to discuss “this chronic behaviour of racial profiling by taxi drivers”, and to educate drivers, particularly recent migrants to Australia, whom he said had little to no knowledge of Indigenous people, about Victorian Aboriginal history.

“I need to understand why cab drivers are scared,” he said. “I want to know who invented the idea of asking Aboriginal people to pay upfront, no matter what the time of day.

“You need a bastard like me. A deadset, ridgy-didge, beyond redemption bastard like me, to take on the taxi industry, to take on the challenge.”

Georgia Nicholls, a spokeswoman from the Victorian Taxi Association, said it was against the law for drivers to turn down fares on the basis of race.

“There’s clearly no excuse for this behaviour,” she said. “We urge him to lodge a formal complaint because we want to be able to follow it up.”