Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the question about the tourism industry. The tourism industry is a very important section of the Australian community. It represents 480,000 directly employed Australians and it represents $22 billion in export earnings. I also appreciate that the tourism industry today is going through a huge challenge both domestically and internationally. We as a nation are not only facing the challenge of the strength of the Australian dollar, which is having a huge impact on traditional markets such as Japan whilst we try to seize opportunities in new markets such as China and India, but also facing the impact of the oil crisis on the cost of aviation. In the last 12 months alone, the cost of jet fuel has doubled. It is also interesting to note that, for the first time ever, the cost of fuel relative to labour costs in a labour intensive industry has now outstripped the cost of labour.

It is in that context that the Australian government is going out of its way to assist the tourist industry, not only through the support of Tourism Australia and its endeavours to put in place a new marketing and creative advertising campaign but also through creating new opportunities through changes in the guidelines for the export market development program. This effectively means the program will no longer just be available to individual tourist operators. The changes are aimed at encouraging regional tourism organisations to work collectively to go beyond Australian shores to actively promote the opportunities in important regions such as the Gold Coast, Northern Queensland, the Hunter region of New South Wales and a number of other regions of Australia which are exceptionally important, because regional employment in the tourism industry is the key to a number of economies.

We also appreciate that one of the big attractions for people coming to Australia is not only that they will have a terrific tourism experience but also that Australia is a nation which takes the fight against terrorism seriously. That means that, in terms of border control, we have to make sure that the government is well resourced financially to put in place the best possible organisational response to terrorism.

See this speech in context