Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last Monday, 29 August, my beautiful wife, Yolonde, and I had the pleasure of attending the 2022 Hostplus North Queensland and Northern Territory restaurant and caterers awards. This is the first time for a couple of years that the awards have been held. There was a little thing that crept into our society, called COVID, that had caused some delays. It was a fabulous evening, with plenty of fierce competition across 27 categories, and there were 98 nominees. I'd like to take the opportunity, first of all, of congratulating all of the winners in their specialist categories, from Darwin, Port Douglas, Cairns, Palm Cove and Townsville. I would like, in the Chamber, to make special mention of Chris Buckley from Chriso the Personal Chef and of CC's Bar and Grill, because both of those businesses took out multiple awards. I would also like to make special mention of Craig Squire of Ochre for taking out the lifetime achievement award, something that, of course, I wasn't particularly surprised by, given his contribution to that industry. So congratulations to all the award winners and to all the nominees.

I had the opportunity to speak to many people that evening. While the industry had very appropriate government assistance during COVID, with the measures we put in place to insulate them from the disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, there's still a lot more that we need to do. Staffing has been a significant challenge in the industry. There needs to be some consideration given to the visa arrangements for hospitality workers. It's clear that this and other measures, such as increasing the hours of work that retired people can undertake before their Services Australia payments are impacted, would be very much welcomed. I also welcomed the focus on that at the last jobs summit.

I had the pleasure of sitting with the association's CEO, Belinda Clarke, to celebrate the achievements of the industry. The association represents 55,000 venues and 350,000 jobs. There are currently 122 jobs on offer online. It's disturbing to know that, despite this massive contribution, they were not offered a seat at the recent jobs summit. It's hard to believe that, given the significance of their contribution, this was just an oversight. It worries me that it may well have been a government putting politics before common sense and that this was another way of punishing the association for their support of WorkChoices all those many years ago.

I understand that the Hotels Association was also omitted from the invitation. Fortunately, at the last moment, they did get an invitation, but the Restaurant and Catering Industry Association missed out. I hope that my concerns are proven wrong. I'd again like to thank the Restaurant and Catering Industry Association and Hostplus for putting on a great event.(Time expired)

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