Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Hansard source

Well, there you go—that's the full commitment of the shadow tourism minister. He comes in, rambles for five minutes, making all sorts of false allegations, and walks back out. That is the summation of Labor's approach to tourism. When it comes to the Australian tourism industry, the Australian Labor Party is nothing other than a complete and utter fraud. This guy opposite, the shadow tourism minister, gets up, rattles off a few platitudes and then not only walks out he has next to nil investment in Australia's tourism industry. This is from the Australian Labor Party, who just took five minutes lecturing the coalition about tourism funding, yet when they were in government they actually cut funding to Tourism Australia.

When the shadow minister makes the false allegation that there's been a $35 million cut to Tourism Australia's funding, he fails to mention two things. The first is that that reduction in TA funding was a consequence of the operation of the Department of Finance's foreign exchange financing of the tourism agency. That's what that was: Department of Finance foreign exchange fluctuations. That's what drove that reduction. But what we know now and what the actual facts are now is that Tourism Australia is receiving record funding under the coalition. When Labor was elected, the federal coalition had left Tourism Australia with a substantial amount of funding. In the 2007-08 budget, there was $136.3 million. What did Labor do in 2013-14? Funding was down to $130.4 million. So, when the shadow tourism minister walks into this chamber and starts rattling on about reductions in Tourism Australia funding, well, Labor would know, because Labor delivered reductions in funding for Tourism Australia. That is in complete and total contrast to the coalition, which has increased funding for Tourism Australia to record amounts. When there was a change in the forward estimates, it was as a consequence of the Department of Finance's foreign exchange dealings.

The second thing to note about Australia's tourism industry is we have a record number of tourists staying for a record length of time and spending a record amount of money. Lo and behold, there has been record funding from the coalition. So there are four records for Australia's tourism industry: record numbers, record spend, record length of stay and record funding from the coalition. So I frankly reject entirely this fraud of a shadow tourism minister when he comes in here and starts telling the coalition how we're getting tourism policy wrong, because the fact is that the results tell a very different story to what we're hearing from the shadow tourism minister.

The other example that we saw was when he tried to verbal me in relation to TTF. What I did was question the authenticity of the shadow tourism minister, which he tried to manipulate and twist into somehow being a criticism of the industry. Do you know what? I have been proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with Australia's tourism industry for decades with operators on the Gold Coast, operators in regional markets like Cairns and operators in our major cities, all of them driving this magnificent industry from strength to strength, notwithstanding that, for the two terms that they were in, the Australian Labor Party slashed Tourism Australia's funding, massively increased the passenger movement charge and levied a host of new taxes on Australia's tourism industry. It was the men and women of Australia's tourism industry—including my very own family—that continued to make sure that Australia went from strength to strength.

I'm so pleased that the foreign minister and I work hand in glove in promoting Australia globally. Take, for example, the bold new campaign in the North American market. It's a terrific campaign, which is, in fact, up for a number of awards at the forthcoming global television advertising industry awards in Cannes—a testament to the bold vision of the MD of Tourism Australia, John O'Sullivan, and of the board of Tourism Australia and to the fact that the foreign minister and I can work together as a team to maximise the opportunity for Tourism Australia to continue to put its best foot forward. We will remain invested in giving the tools that Australia's tourism industry needs to make sure they go from strength to strength, to continue to provide record exports, to continue to see record numbers of tourists, to continue to see record spending in the tourism industry, and to continue to drive investment in the tourism industry so that we can, most fundamentally, continue to create so many jobs for those hardworking men and women and the next generation of young Aussies coming through.

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