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

just as there was an increase in the passenger movement charge in 1999 by the Howard government, from $27 to $30. Then they sought to create the impression that this would just be to cover short-term costs related to the Olympic Games, but all of a sudden we found that increase was to continue—it was set in concrete.

Then we go to 2001. It increased in 1999 and then in 2001we had a further increase from $30 to $38, an increase of 27 per cent. So it is good for the coalition, it is okay to increase the passenger movement charge, but when it comes to a government of an alternative political persuasion it is not appropriate.

Let us also go to what we did as against the opposition. The increase in the passenger movement charge will have a minimal impact on the Australian tourism industry, because it is actually going better than the member for Paterson would like it to go both internationally and domestically. The average international visitor during the 2010-11 financial year spent $4,096 when visiting Australia. The proposed increase in the passenger movement charge of $8, or 17 per cent—a lower increase than the 27 per cent increase in 2001—represents only a small cost in the context of total visitor spend: 0.2 per cent.

I also inform the House that work undertaken in 2011 by the Centre of Economic Policy at the University of New South Wales on behalf of the state and territory governments—overseen by Tourism Research Australia—modelled a 20 per cent increase in the passenger movement charge, higher than what the government proposes. It found that it would have minimal impact on international visitation and potentially a positive impact in terms of Australians not going overseas, which is one of the desires of the Australian tourism industry. At the moment, we have 5.5 million visitors per year from overseas with 7.5 million Australians going overseas per year because of the strength of the Australian dollar—and the strength of the Australian economy.

On the question relating to how the Australian tourism industry is going, the truth is that in relative terms, given the challenges in North America and Europe—and I suppose the opposition spokesman has not noticed that there are major economic challenges in North America and Europe at the moment—international tourism is doing well from an Australian perspective. In 2011, there were 5.9 million international arrivals, a similar result to 2010, which is not bad given the challenges in Europe and North America. Growth in Chinese arrivals was particularly strong, with an increase of 19.4 per cent in one year. Indonesian arrivals were up 13.2 per cent—and people forget the importance of Indonesia. And there was an increase in Indian arrivals of 6.8 per cent. (Time expired)

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