Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

If Australia can get it right, we have a huge competitive advantage for the future in our region. With the growing middle class in China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia, the opportunities for job creation are so critical. So let me suggest seven things that the government could do that are practical, to supplement what is in this legislation.

The first thing it could do is to have a tourism minister. It is pretty simple. It matters—titles matter when you engage in the international community. John Key in New Zealand—let me give him as an example—is the Prime Minister and the Minister for Tourism. He recognises how important tourism is in New Zealand, and I think that the government could have regard to that.

The second thing that they could do is to invest in public transport. Public transport is so critical for tourists who arrive in major cities. Those of us who have been to places like London, with the Tube, Paris, with the Metro, or New York City, with the subway, know that those cities simply could not function, particularly for visitors, without those. Public transport is absolutely critical for the federal government to be engaged in if it is not going to distort the market and lead not just to zero investment in public transport by the federal government but a reduced investment by state governments as well over a period of time.

The third thing that it can do, in a related area, is to engage in cities policy—to develop productive, livable and sustainable cities. Just a couple of weeks ago the Queen Mary 2 docked in Sydney Harbour. It brought with it thousands of tourists, ready to spend an average of $370 per day in our shops and on our services. That is about job creation.

Action on climate change: so many of our iconic tourist destinations will be impacted if dangerous climate change is allowed to occur. I think of the Kakadu National Park and the Australian Alps, as well as the Great Barrier Reef.

The fifth is to have a vision for high-speed rail. Last Monday I was in Albury with the candidate for the state election, Ross Jackson, talking with him and others in the community about the potential for this project. I was talking just yesterday with the former Deputy Prime Minister, Tim Fischer, a strong advocate for high-speed rail and someone who I appointed to the High Speed Rail Advisory Group. If we have the connecting up of our eastern seaboard capitals—Sydney to Melbourne and Sydney to Brisbane in three hours—as well as regional centres—including Canberra, of course, in under an hour, Albury-Wodonga in under an hour and Newcastle in under an hour from major capital cities—then that transforms economic opportunity in those regional centres, and tourism would be a major beneficiary of a high-speed rail line.

No-one these days who goes from Rome to Milan goes by air; they all go by train—just like from Paris to London. It has transformed travel in Europe between those cities. All the research that we did showed that rail is more than competitive for journeys of under three hours and, of course, it is also safer, better for the environment and a better travelling experience in terms of the time wasted in going to and from an airport. Indeed, one of the stops is envisaged to be at Wagga Wagga. It would transform the opportunity for international visitors to visit a great regional city like Wagga Wagga. It would be a very positive experience, and the opportunity for businesses that would flow there would no doubt flow through the economy.

The sixth issue is respect for research, institutions and evidence based policy. We believe in best practice, evidence based policy. That cannot happen if the Commonwealth does not provide adequate services through Tourism Research Australia and Tourism Australia. The abolition of the Survey of Tourist Accommodation last year came without notice, and the government still has not found funding for next year. That has a real impact: businesses tell me that they cannot plan and investors do not have the decision-making tools they need to feel confident about investing here.

And, lastly, there is international engagement. International engagement is absolutely critical. We started, in government, the Asia Marketing Fund to target new growth markets like China, India and Malaysia. We also conceived and funded the first Australia Week in China to take tourism, trade and investment to Shanghai. The current government is not having that in 2015. The current government is not having Australia represented at the World Expo in Milan this year. That is so important. There are over 950,000 people in Australia who have Italian heritage, I being one of them, and for Australia not to be positioned there is a real lost opportunity in terms of the market. It is good enough for places like Kiribati and Tuvalu, island states in the Pacific that are a lot poorer than Australia, to be represented at the World Expo, but we will not be. This is seen as a slight by the Italian government and also by the European Community, which is such a critical tourism market for Australia, and that is very much a lost opportunity, particularly given that we obviously have an embassy in Rome and, indeed, we have a trade commissioner in Milan.

So Labor sees a large number of areas, and I have put forward seven practical suggestions to assist the government, because I am always here to help the government with positive suggestions on a way forward. We do welcome the very small step that has been taken through today's bill to at least assist Austrade to increase its capacity to focus on this tourism industry. Tourism is vital for Australia. It is important that it be not a footnote but central to economic strategy moving forward. In terms of job creation and economic growth, it is a vital sector for our economy.

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