&gt; I&#x27;m not too sure I agree with the government doling out our taxpayers to compensate a dying&#x2F;legacy industry<p>This is a tradition in Australia.  When our law creates property rights that shouldn&#x27;t exist, and people spend money in good faith to buy those rights, we compensate them when we fix the law and their property stops existing.  We did the same thing with water licences: it wasn&#x27;t the farmers&#x27; fault that the legislatures stuffed up and sold them water that didn&#x27;t exist.<p>Of course, a lot of the money paid for taxi licences was speculation.  When people speculate on bad laws staying in force, then lobby the government to ensure that they do, those people deserve to lose their money.  Twenty thousand dollars per licence sounds like a good balance to me.