Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to support my good friend the member for Adelaide in his motion calling on the government to acknowledge the dire situation in our tourism sector, especially around travel agents, and to call on the government to do more. Most specifically, the No. 1 call for the government is to continue with JobKeeper.

Let's go back a second. We started this pandemic urging the government to support wage subsidies for Australian workers, and of course the government, including the Prime Minister, shut that down. Obviously, he realised that he needed to do it and then reversed his position and created the scheme called JobKeeper. Fast-forward just over a year. We now find ourselves in the situation where businesses, through no fault of their own, are going to be forced to let people go and forced to close their doors, because this government is refusing to support them throughout this pandemic. We started this pandemic with a simple principle: if you as a business are required to make sacrifices in order to help manage this pandemic, then the government is going to support you with wage subsidies. If you're forced to close your doors, if your revenue is down, the government will support you and support the jobs to make sure that they're there at the end of this pandemic.

But this government has completely forgotten about this principle. They are completely forgetting about the businesses that still rely on JobKeeper—businesses that are not affected by the restrictions of state governments but by the restrictions of this federal government. It is a federal government decision to shut the international borders—which I support; it is unsafe to have international visitors right now in Australia. But what this government is choosing to do to businesses who are affected by the government's decisions, businesses who prior to this pandemic had good and sustainable business models, means that those businesses are now going to be forced to lay off jobs and lose people throughout this pandemic.

The travel agents are the perfect example. These businesses make their money from international travel. They make it from the packages, the flights, the hotels—all of the big international products that they have to offer. And they've worked hard. But, throughout this pandemic, with all of the international travel being cancelled, the work hasn't stopped for our Australian travel agents; they've had to continue to work to support those people who are already engaging in their businesses. They've had to work for refunds. They've had to work try to corral money from airlines, hotels and a range of different stakeholders. Travel agents do not get paid until you've gone on your holiday. If you're an Australian and you go to one of your travel agents, and they organise a wonderful trip for you, it's not until you get on the plane that that money then flows into our local small businesses.

As you can imagine, these businesses have been around for decades. They are great Australian, hardworking businesses. They're local businesses, small businesses and businesses in my electorate, like FBI Travel, Travelcall, Goldman Travel, Albert Park Travel, Aurora, TravelManagers, G.E.T Educational Tours, Leisure Options, Magellan Travel and many, many more. These are great local businesses. These are businesses who I've met with. From the way in which they talk about their staff and their industry—they love it. They love the fact that they're able to organise and be a part of people's travels and holidays and adventures. It's a source of pride. It's also a source of pride that many have had staff with them for 10 or 20 years. People come into these industries and they are part of a good, functioning Australian economy.

What are they faced with now? They're faced with a federal government who have made decisions affecting the way in which they can do business and are walking away from supporting them, so that their businesses may not exist at the end of this pandemic. If you want to know the mindset of this federal government, when asked about pulling JobKeeper, they say: 'Well, the total number of jobs are going be moving up anyway. Don't worry about these businesses, because we're going to have more businesses and more jobs arising in the economy.' Well, tell that to a local travel agent in my electorate. Own up to the fact that you're happy as a federal government to see businesses shut their doors.

On this side of the House, in the federal Labor Party, we are not. We are going to stand with these small businesses and fight for their survival.

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