Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Kennedy for his question, because it's an incredibly important question. The tourism industry is absolutely vital to Australia and in particular to regional and rural Australia. There are many ways that we encourage tourists to Australia and there are many ways that we encourage tourists to regional and rural Australia. The member for Kennedy participated in one of those, and he obviously had a lot of fun. We have a lot of things under consideration to help with the impact the coronavirus is having on local industries and local businesses, including looking at BAS payments. We've done that for the bushfires, and we're looking to see whether we need to expand it for the coronavirus as well.

I know this myself, because there has been a large impact on travellers going to the Great Ocean Road to see the magnificent Twelve Apostles. There's been a huge impact on businesses and industry along there. The ATO is looking at ways it can assist. Also, we've rolled out a $76 million tourism package, which is going to try to help improve domestic tourism so that we can get tourists out of the capital cities and into our regions and our rural areas, and make sure that we get international tourists from other markets coming to our nation.

We want to make sure the tourism industry continues to thrive in this nation. We know that Chinese tourists have been a large contributor to the tourism sector here. We want to make sure that once we're through the coronavirus, once we can welcome Chinese tourists back to our shores, they will know that they're welcome here and that there are wonderful tourism operators who are providing all types of experiences, whether they be for Chinese visitors or for visitors from the rest of the world. We want to make sure we're backing and supporting our tourism operators.

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