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

I rise to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (2012 Measures No. 2) Bill 2012 and the Income Tax (Managed Investment Trust Withholding Tax) Amendment Bill 2012. I rise to speak on these budget measures, which are of huge significance to the tourism industry and our ability to ensure the infrastructure pipeline. I have to say that I have never seen a government more out of touch with the tourism industry, one that has so breached trust with the tourism and one that has so failed in basic communication between ministers. I say that because on 2 May this year the government announced a tourism investment guide to market Australian tourism investment to potential foreign investors in Shanghai.

It is true that this government needs to lift their game to attract these investors. For example, they need to restore the Survey of Tourist Accommodation and a comprehensive way to deliver a complete industry-wide performance model. They need to reduce government borrowing, which competes with tourism accommodation providers when they seek finance to improve their properties. They need to set KPIs for Austrade officials around the world to find inward investment, and they need to reduce red tape that currently makes residential property development more attractive than developing tourism accommodation stock.

Despite this, I welcomed the initiative that day and I commended the minister, saying, 'It is a good first step towards improving Australia's accommodation stock.' Depending on which model we assume to be true, we will need to provide somewhere between 30,000 new beds and 70,000 new beds to reach the Tourism 2020 targets. The opposition would help the sector help itself, by properly restoring the Survey of Tourist Accommodation. Under Labor the requirement for small boutique accommodation providers to report guest numbers was scrapped. Hotels and motels offering fewer than 15 beds are not required to report on occupancy.

While this saves the ABS less than $1 million, it means Australia no longer has reliable data on occupancy and no way for bank managers to determine returns on investment sought by providers. Work has begun within the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism to restore reporting, with an online system to replace its expensive and slow phone interview based system. However, important parts of the sector have been dismayed by the lack of industry-wide consultation, by the extended delays in this project and by the government's long-term commitment to the project itself. The exclusion of small accommodation providers from the data capture represents a lost opportunity to establish complete research platforms upon which to base important tourism decisions. The government's prospectus was a totally powerful measure so long as it was part of the broader policy to deal with underinvestment. I was dismayed therefore to learn that, six days after launching its prospectus, the government doubled the tax on international hotel investors. The increase to managed investment trust withholding tax is one of the measures announced in the budget which have set the tourism industry into an absolute spin.

In this budget, the government has directly attack the tourism industry. For example (1) there is no carbon tax compensation for tourism, and this stands to destroy 6,400 jobs, mostly in regional and rural Australia and cut 10 per cent from industry profits; (2) the budget for Tourism Australia has been reduced by 6.2 per cent, which is $8 million in real terms; (3) the passenger movement charge has been increased from $47 to $55 per passenger, and a desire has been expressed to index it by the CPI; (4) $118.1 million in costs for AFP security at airports has been passed on, and these will be passed on to airlines, who will pass them on to tourists; (5) there have been 90 headcount cuts to Customs staff, so increasing tourist waiting times at airports; (6) duty-free concessions have been reduced; (7) the visa label charge will increase by $10; (8) there is a $7 million investment in SmartGates at the same time as the government is cutting $10 million from elsewhere in Customs' budget, and this will take the form of further staffing cuts; and (9) there are tax-loss carrybacks only for companies, and these are limited to two years. Australian Federation of Travel Agents CEO Jayson Westbury says:

If the Government has a budget black hole, it is not reasonable to hit the one industry that provides long term and career based jobs to everyday Australians, who already contribute significantly more than their fair share of taxes.

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