Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I see my time expiring quickly. I have a question for the minister. Cairns has suffered recently from the loss of flights between Japan and Cairns. We have lost 62 per cent of the seat capacity, effectively 182,468 seats per year, because of the cuts in Qantas flights from western Japan and Narita. That equates to 3,500 or so seats per week—a significant loss of opportunities for Japanese to come to Cairns. In the year to the end of March we had 198,000 visitors to Cairns. That represents a significant number of Japanese who came to visit tropical North Queensland and there has been some economic analysis that shows that the potential financial loss to Cairns equates to about $100 million. Those are significant losses.

I sat down with the minister on the day that the cuts happened and had a good opportunity to talk to him about it. I also met the next day with Tourism Tropical North Queensland. They had developed a four-point plan that involved reviewing the Japanese market and other options and looking to accelerate an emerging market strategy and to attract carriers and tourists from new markets. I note that the Chinese market has grown by 71 per cent in the year to March, to 58,000 visitors. An important part of their plan was to look at getting additional funding, and my question to the minister relates to that in particular. They also talked about business support, which was the fourth point. We have just heard from the Minister for Trade about the impacts of the previous government’s cuts to EMDG, which also hurt tourism in tropical North Queensland. Part of their response was to see what this government is going to do to EMDG, because they know they were hurt by the Howard government. I know the minister has done a lot of work and I have enjoyed working with him and the Prime Minister to come up with a response to support tourism in tropical North Queensland. So I would appreciate it if the minister would outline the federal government’s response to this really significant impact on the tourism industry in tropical North Queensland.

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