Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I have serious concerns about the management of the tourism portfolio. This is an industry, when you combine tourism and hospitality, that employs about one million people or 8.8 per cent of the Australian workforce. The issue I want to start with is the funding for Tourism Australia. When this government came to power the budget for Tourism Australia was $136,269,000. This year the proposed budget is $130,178,000 and in the forward estimates it is $134,556,000. This is the lowest funding level ever for Tourism Australia—the lowest funding ever for an industry that employs a million people. In fact, in real terms, the dollar loss between 2007 and 2012 is $18,949,000 or 16 per cent, and projected through to the forward estimates it is $22,943,000 or 19 per cent less. So, Minister, given that last year Australians spent 132 million bed nights on holidays overseas and that in 2008 Australia dropped from fourth to 13th place in the World Economic Forum's travel and tourism competitiveness index rankings, how do you justify reducing the budget for Tourism Australia when the numbers have dropped off so massively?

The second thing I want to raise with you, Minister, is about your announcement on 2 May, the week before the budget, when you launched the Australian Tourism Investment Guide with great fanfare, yet in the budget—and you must have been aware of this—the MIT withholding rate was increased from 7½ to 15 per cent. Minister, surely you would have understood that that was going to have a massive effect. You got people wound up, geed up and excited about investing in Australia and then, after barely a week had gone by, that confidence for overseas investment particularly in our hotel industry was absolutely destroyed. It is no secret that there is a bed shortage in Australia, particularly of quality hotel accommodation. We both agree on that. So how do you address the fact that you launched the policy knowing what was going to be in the budget? You are a cabinet minister and I can only assume that things affecting your portfolio would have been discussed with you.

The third thing I wish to raise with you, Minister, in the limited time we have here is the passenger movement charge. When you came to government in 2007 the passenger movement charge was $38. It was increased to $47. It is now proposed to increase it to $55. Minister, how do you justify a 45 per cent increase in a tax when this, projected through on the forward estimates, will raise $1.04 billion but the operational cost for Customs in delivering the services is around $239 million? On top of that, how do you justify putting a CPI on the PMC tax going forward from next year? Minister, given that you turned up at the National Tourism Alliance on 2 March, the final line under item 2 of their communique says:

The Minister stated there would be no increase in the passenger movement charge.

And then later on, in discussion on 'passenger facilitation', it said:

The Minister informed the meeting he had heard of no proposal to raise the PMC in the upcoming budget.

Minister, how can an industry have confidence if you are telling them one thing before a budget and doing something different afterwards, or does this equate to the promise that 'there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead' and then you introduce one? You have gone to the tourism industry and told them that there will be no increases in the PMC, and then after the budget they find that they are getting whacked.

I know you are going to say that you are offsetting with the Asia Marketing Fund of $61 million. Minister, your CPI increase alone will collect $156 million just on the CPI increase, and you are giving $61 million back to the industry. How do you justify that when our tourism industry is doing it so tough?

See this speech in context