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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I wonder if it is wrong for you to put a call out for somebody who is missing in action. The person charged with responsibility for the tourism industry in this country has not spoken in this debate. When I look at the speakers list for today I see he is not listed to speak, so I can understand why the government tried to guillotine debate. What is more telling about the list of speakers is that the government only had two people prepared to stand up and talk about the tourism industry.

The problem with the government is they do not connect or communicate with the tourism industry, and that is why we have this situation where they have had to have a second humiliating backdown today on their budget measures. If they had bothered to connect with the tourism industry they would understand the impact. Taxing development opportunities for foreign investment in the hotel industry is only going to drive investors away and therefore lead to less hotels being built. Taxing tourists means less tourists come. The government do not understand business because none of them, as far as I can see, has been in business. Not one has been in the tourism industry; not one has had their own money on the line making sure their business survives. So we have seen these two humiliating backdowns where the government have no control of their own budgetary measures.

Had the minister not gone to the National Tourism Alliance and said to them, not once but twice during that meeting in Cairns, 'There will be no increase to the passenger movement charge,' they might not have mounted the campaign which led to full-page advertisements condemning this government for seeing the tourism industry as an instant cash cow that offered little resistance. They stood up because the Minister for Tourism had told them there would be no increase. It is the same as with the carbon tax promise before the election. This minister, though, had also, as I said earlier, instructed his department to do modelling on a 20 per cent increase in the PMC and to work out his defences. What we have here is a minister who has not spoken on this bill, a minister who has not defended the increases. Yet last night at the Australian Federation of Travel Agents, Labor friends of tourism—and I was surprised that anyone turned up after putting these bills on—he told them that he was going to defend the CPI increase and the PMC increases. Well, Minister, we are prepared to allow the debate to go so that you can come into this House and defend your want to increase taxes on the tourism industry. What you do not understand, Minister, is that tax does not create jobs, only revenue for a very poor government.

The minister is not a bad bloke really, but he has just failed to connect. There was a movie once, called Failure to Launch, where somebody would not connect, would not make a commitment, and escaped at every possible opportunity. That was about marriage, but what you have got to do with the tourism industry is engage with them at least, and this minister has not. If this minister had engaged with the industry, he would have understood and listened to the fact that the PMC was bad news. He would have understood that amplifying it with a CPI increase was going to tip the industry over the edge. In fact not only does he not understand the industry, he also does not understand his own department and his own government. As I said earlier, this is the same minister who, the exact week before the budget took the flight up to Shanghai and launched a tourism investment policy to attract Asian investment into our hotel industry to build those much-needed 30,000 to 70,000 beds. The policy lasted about a week, because then they wanted to double the withholding tax. We have seen yet again another embarrassing backdown. Do know why you have to make backdowns? It is because you do not understand the industry and you do not connect. The minister for tourism is to stand condemned by this House, because he has already been condemned by the industry for failing to deliver. I welcome what is actually the amendment by the shadow minister for justice and customs, because that was put out in the marketplace and the minister has picked up on it and followed the coalition lead to protect our tourism industry. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

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