Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I'd like to offer my sincere condolences to every family member and friend who has lost a loved one to COVID-19. In Western Australia we have all our borders closed, and I think most West Australians would agree that that is currently a sensible approach. Not a day goes by where I'm not hearing about people visiting all those wonderful tourism hotspots, in my electorate, in Broome, Exmouth and Coral Bay, and this is great news—that Western Australians are visiting their own backyard. I'm very happy with that. We know that accommodation service providers, in most of these locations, are doing okay but the tourism operators are experiencing challenging times.

In Kununurra, they're in dire straits. There are very few flights going in and out of the town, and with a challenging drive of 3,000 kilometres from Perth to Kununurra the tourism numbers are way down, as you can imagine. I fear that many of these operators will not survive for season 2021. Even in towns like Port Hedland, which is a thriving iron ore town, retail and hospitality are really struggling with their workforce. We know that the supply of backpackers has dried up in regional Western Australia, and Western Australians simply don't want to take up those jobs in regional WA.

According to REMPLAN's analysis of Treasury data, both Exmouth and Shark Bay shires had 50 per cent or more businesses apply for JobKeeper. These WA tourism drawcards are in the top 10 for the country's JobKeeper applications. I don't think this is a top 10 that any shire council wants to be in. They tell me Exmouth is packed to the rafters. So this significant amount of JobKeeper assistance is simply unfathomable. There's no doubt that JobKeeper has provided significant support to many businesses in Durack. I'm really proud of the federal government support that we're providing to those businesses throughout the whole of Durack, not just in the north-west.

But we have to ask ourselves, and be honest, how much pain is JobKeeper masking? This is something that concerns me really deeply. We all know that there are many businesses doing well, whether it's the floorcovering guy, the cafe, the hairdresser or the local tradies—I know that in Geraldton you can't get an electrician for love nor money. So this is good news, but for those who are doing it tough, especially those very weary tourism operators—especially in the north-west—who are planning for their future, I urge the Western Australian state government to set out clearly our state's plan for the opening of the borders. Tell my Durack business community what the health conditions that must be met are, including what the hotspot strategy is. They're on their knees and they need the WA government to tell them what the plan is.

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