Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Hansard source

I will pick up where the minister left off. Obviously, the tourism industry has been particularly impacted by COVID-19 and will continue to struggling in the face of the Morrison government's delays with the vaccine rollout and its refusal to take responsibility for quarantine. Pre-COVID, tourism employed over one million Australians across some 300,000 businesses, but over the past 18 months we've watched as the industry has contracted and shuddered under the weight of mounting pressures. While some parts of the industry have begun to recover, particularly those that are in the domestic market, businesses reliant on international visitors continue to face challenges and need support.

To date, the government have overwhelmingly relied on economy-wide measures to support the industry, not recognising the unique challenges in the tourism sector. I think it is important for the government to explain why they don't fully understand or appreciate some of the challenges and stresses that the tourism industry are under. You can see this demonstrated in the approach to the end of JobKeeper. The Morrison government knew for some time that it was not going to continue JobKeeper, but, instead of being clear with tourism operators, in an industry that relies on forward planning, it made them wait until the eleventh hour and then announced a haphazard plan that did not provide any immediate support. The government's plan of discounted flights to hand-picked regions, which were selected in a shroud of mystery, alongside the guaranteed small business loans, which are almost impossible to access, was immediately slammed by peak bodies as falling short of what the sector needs to save jobs and businesses.

In addition, the government has doubled down on a series of grant programs which have repeatedly missed the mark, whether it is the Supporting Australia's Exhibiting Zoos and Aquariums Program, which, after a year, has only spent around 50 per cent of its funding, or the lacklustre COVID-19 Consumer Travel Support Program, which, during the first round, produced vastly inequitable results across agencies, followed by a second round that has seen significant delays for many agents. Both grant programs have suffered the same problem: they were designed by a government which isn't on the side of the tourism industry and the over one million people whose livelihoods depend on it. In my own electorate in South Australia, I've heard from a number of tourism operators who are uncertain about their future and their ability to weather this storm.

We know that domestic tourism alone cannot make up for the $45 billion gap of international tourism, and the government has acknowledged borders are unlikely to open until the middle of next year. Why won't the government provide much-needed support to internationally reliant businesses, who continue to be impacted by the government's delays with the vaccine rollout and the refusal to take responsibility for the quarantine arrangements? What does the government say to the thousands of business owners whose livelihoods hang in the balance while waiting for this government to recognise that it has a special responsibility to these businesses, who are in this situation through no fault of their own? And can the minister be content to continue to sit by and simply watch this once thriving industry struggling to desperately hang on?

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