Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the Northern Australians working within the tourism industry, which plays a vital role in supporting the Northern Australian economy;

(2) recognises that tourist spending provides further opportunities for local small businesses within the community; and

(3) notes that:

(a) the Government is investing in small businesses through its Jobs and Small Business Package released in the 2015 budget; and

(b) this package provides small businesses, including most businesses within the tourism industry, with much needed assistance to grow and create jobs.

The Top End of the Northern Territory is pretty much paradise. And, as I have said many times in this place, the Northern Territory is the true capital of north Australia. My electorate of Solomon, including the cities of Darwin and Palmerston, is a friendly, vibrant, multicultural, cosmopolitan place to live. The harbour, seas and rivers that surround us have some of the best sports fishing anywhere in the world. We have weekend markets with the world's best coffees and laksas. Most locals will go down to Parap markets and see Mary for a laksa. We have stunning national parks just down the road. We have a rich cultural history. We have the world's best weather, at least for most of the year. So it is no surprise that so many people want to visit. Alongside primary production and resources, tourism is one of the cornerstones of the Northern Territory economy. In the last year, the Northern Territory clocked 4.4 million visitor nights, and those visitors spent $1.85 billion, contributing 8.1 per cent to the territory's economy.

I put this motion to the House today to recognise the contribution that tourism operators contribute to the Northern Territory, and to northern Australia's economy. To the hoteliers, restaurateurs, tour operators, charter operators, to the bartenders and waiters, the bus drivers and rangers, and everyone else involved in tourism, to the 11.5 per cent of the Northern Territorians who are involved in the tourism sector, we owe a debt of thanks. The work you do pays off in two ways. Your sector of tourism, perhaps more than any other, has invaluable trickle-down contributions to the economy. Businesses like barra fishing safaris need to get their boats serviced and maintained—another popular service organisation is In & Outboard Marine. Our restaurants, like the award-winning Salt n Peppa, will only serve the best local barramundi and seafood. Because hoteliers need staff to prepare meals and greet guests they employ people, who in turn spend their wages in the Northern Territory, which further contributes to our economy. Money spent in tourism quickly makes its way down into the economy, keeping cashflow into the businesses and keeping Territorians in jobs.

The other major contributing factor is that every single satisfied customer you create—every single person who is awestruck by the sunset at Mindil Beach markets or the beauty and tranquillity of Yellow Water or the spectacular Litchfield National Park or Kakadu—goes back to where they came from down south and becomes a salesman for north Australia. It is wonderful that we have here the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, who is very interested in Kakadu and Litchfield. He is going to have some announcements about that in the coming weeks. These people who become salesmen for north Australia then tell their friends what an amazing experience they had in the Top End. They will mention to their colleagues at work how much fun their kids had feeding the fish at Aquascene, or taking a tour with a traditional owner through Kakadu. They will post photographs on their social media of the prize fish they caught on a charter with, say, Darwin Reef 'n Wrecks. Who knows? They may even find the million-dollar barra, which the parliamentary secretary is also wanting to find—a million-dollar barra is swimming through our Top End waters.

Because of the hard work, the professionalism, the innovation and the commitment to creating a good product of everybody involved in the sector every single tourist who visits the Northern Territory or north Australia leaves us as an ambassador. The coalition government is helping this sector. Small business operators in tourism are benefiting from the lowest company tax rate in nearly 50 years, thanks to this year's budget through its Jobs and Small Business package. Tens of thousands of pages of red tape have been abolished or simplified. This means tourism operators can spend more time with their clients and less time filling out forms.

I am proud to be part of the coalition government which supports the tourism sector and supports small business in north Australia. Special thanks go to Tourism NT and Tourism Top End for the great work that they do in advocating for tourism across the Northern Territory. I would also like to plug the new campaign—#DoTheNT.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the member for Solomon's motion and reserve my right to speak.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Solomon for moving this motion on tourism and small businesses. She made some valid points, but there are others that she overlooked which I will concentrate on in a moment. It is important that we understand that the tourism industry in the Northern Territory revolves around iconic sites, all of which are in my electorate. It revolves around the fishing, all of which is in my electorate, including in Darwin Harbour. Whilst it is very important that the institutionalised tourism relating to the arts and craft, the museum and the work of the hoteliers and restaurateurs in Darwin is acknowledged, it is important to understand that, primarily, when people come to the Northern Territory they want to visit Lingiari and all of its attractions, including most importantly engaging with Aboriginal people.

The latest visitation figures supplied by Tourism NT are from March 2015. Sadly, they tell us there has been a decline of 4.8 per cent in tourism visitation over the previous year. Tourism is the single largest employer in the NT economy, accounting for more than 15,000 workers both directly and indirectly employed. Those figures are from 2013-14 and roughly equate to 12 per cent of the total working population. Tourism income from the same year amounted to $1.61 billion, gross value added. There are many small businesses active in the tourism market in the Northern Territory that are working their guts out—figuratively and literally—on a daily basis to increase the Territory's share of the declining tourism market. They are often family owned and run initiatives that work to show visitors the best the NT has to offer.

There has always been high demand for Indigenous tourism experiences—I know this from my own work with the Central Land Council in the 1980s, when I was involved in working with the tourism industry and undertaking what I believe to have been the first tourism survey of visitors to Uluru. Eighty per cent of international visitors are seeking an Aboriginal tourism experience. Large Indigenous-owned organisations like Katherine-based Nitmiluk Tours and the Ayers Rock Resort at Uluru are leading the way in developing new products like Nitmiluk's new culture cruise that explores the history, culture, art and stories of the Jawoyn traditional owners. The new Wintjiri Arts and Museum at Yulara in the Ayers Rock Resort will enable visitors to learn more about Anangu culture and to interact with artists and artisans from the nearby Mutitjulu community.

However, it is the smaller family- and community-owned and operated Aboriginal tourism experiences that have the potential to have the greatest impact on regional development and employment across the Territory. Twenty different Yolngu communities have united behind a plan, Lirrwi Tourism, to create a thriving tourism industry that will foster economic independence, strengthen cultural traditions and help Australia's tourism profile internationally and domestically. Djawa 'Timmy' Burarrwanga has a vision of as many as 50 new Aboriginal-owned businesses in Arnhem Land. The Yolngu tourism masterplan has been developed with the help of former Tourism Australia managing director, John Morse, who believes that Arnhem Land has the potential to become Australia's next tourism icon. He says:

Arnhem Land is one of the most extraordinary places in Australia—a land with a deep spiritual significance where you can make a personal connection with the world's oldest continuous culture. It will never be a mass tourism destination, but it has the potential to be a very high-value destination that helps define Australia internationally and contribute a great deal to our national identity.

Despite the best efforts of hardworking tourism operators, they are being badly let down by this current government. This government and the CLP representatives in Canberra have vacated the field as far as promoting Australian tourism is concerned, at the most important time for job creation. There is no designated tourism minister—merely an afterthought to the trade ministry. The Abbott government has cancelled all domestic marketing funding. The withdrawal of funding has meant that there will be no Australia Week in China 2015, potentially our biggest tourism market. There is no Australian stall at the world expo in Milan this year. More than 120 countries will have stalls, but sadly we will not. Vanuatu will. The Abbott Government has withdrawn our membership of the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

These are serious matters. As the mining boom declines and the Australian economy shifts towards service provision, we need to promote employment growth in other sectors, particularly in tourism. I say to tourism operators in the Northern Territory: despite the ridiculousness of the way in which this government is approaching tourism, tourism operations and tourism marketing, you know that you have our support—that is, the Labor Party's support—to go on and do your jobs and to provide good tourism experiences for all those who wish to visit, including the grey nomads who go up and down the Stuart Highway, as well as overseas visitors.

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Solomon for putting this motion to the House, because it gives me the opportunity to talk directly about Capricornia, which is the gateway to northern Australia. The Tropic of Capricorn is the geographic line which defines the starting point of our nation's North, and this line is the southern boundary of my electorate.

So why should you come and visit us? Capricornia is home to the southern Great Barrier Reef, with amazing beaches, fishing and island getaways; rainforest retreats such as Byfield; and picturesque towns such as Yeppoon and Emu Park, which is home to the most stunning Anzac war memorial in Queensland. Capricornia is the beef and sugar capital of Australia and has a rich inland tourism trail leading to Carnarvon Gorge, the Sapphire Gemfields, and farm stays. And, of course, we are home to the best viewing spot for wild platypus, at Eungella in the beautiful Pioneer Valley west of Mackay.

Tourism and hospitality are one of the top five pillars of Australia's future economic growth. We rely on small family-run tourist enterprises to bring visitors and dollars into our economy. One such small business is the Capricorn Caves, stunning limestone caves north of Rockhampton. Here, owner Ann Augusteyn has completed a bold project to replace old lighting that has illuminated the caves' interior since the 1960s. The caves are now lit for tourists, with solar panelled LED technology, the first system of its kind in Australia. It is the first cave in Australia to run lights off solar power. It provides a template for other cave managers from around the world to see an increase in local tourist numbers.

Spending by tourists provides opportunities for local small business to grow and prosper within our communities, which in turn creates more jobs for locals, young people and our local families. The difference between us and Labor is that the coalition government is investing in small businesses like tourism through our Growing Jobs and Small Business package, released in the 2015 budget. It is hailed as the nation's most significant small business package in 50 years. It provides small businesses, including the tourism industry, with much-needed assistance to grow and create jobs. Key benefits directly helping mum-and-dad businesses include cuts to small business tax and tax depreciation help. Small businesses with turnover below $2 million benefit from an immediate tax deduction for every asset they acquire that is valued up to $20,000 for tax purposes. Coupled with this package are our free trade agreements that this government has arranged with China, Japan and Korea. They will promote our nation's trade and enhance our profile as a key destination for international visitors.

That is what we are doing, but sadly Labor is lagging far behind. In Capricornia, I am fighting along with the Capricorn Coast community for the Labor government in Queensland to grant a boutique gaming licence to Great Keppel Island, once a bustling tourism and holiday hot spot off Yeppoon. There is a proposed major resort project on Great Keppel Island which would potentially provide 1,500 local jobs directly linked to tourism. The GKI project, as it is known, includes a small-scale casino which is necessary to attract international travellers. But once again in Capricornia Labor, beholden to the Greens, is refusing to get on and approve it. We have lost countless jobs in our local coal sector in the past few years, and now an incompetent Labor government in Queensland is staring down 1,500 new jobs for Central Queensland families. We need this project for our economy, our tourism and our employment. I continue to call on Labor to show some spine and stop standing in the way of families and young people who need jobs. Get on with it and approve the GKI licence now.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whilst I acknowledge this motion that is before the House and the fact that it talks about an important topic—tourism in northern Australia and the importance it has to the northern Australian economy—there are a couple of points in the motion that I think the government is trying to gloss over and not deal with the reality of. The first, as the previous speaker on this side of the House mentioned, is that this government, on coming to office, cancelled all funding that was allocated to promoting and developing the domestic tourism market. I am from regional Victoria, and we have cold winters, and there are lots of people seeking a warmer tourism location and holiday. It is just disappointing that this government has cancelled the funding that would have helped promote northern Australia to people in the southern states that have cold winters.

This government, on coming to office, also scrapped tourism grants, which were going to help a number of small businesses and tourism operators to develop strategies. In this motion, the mover has acknowledged the government is investing in small business through its Jobs and Small Business package released in this year's budget. Let us not forget that members of this government are the same people who voted against a similar package when the Labor government brought it forward. Then, when this government came to office last year, in its first budget it scrapped a similar package. Now it has brought it back. So it is not new policy by this government; it is Labor policy that these government members voted against when they were in opposition. Then they repealed it when they were in government. They have now brought it back in this budget.

The other point I would like to make is about the final part of the motion, about the creation of jobs. Jobs for who? In my experience, and from talking to people who work in the North, this government has been very good at creating jobs for overseas workers, for backpackers, in the North, particularly in the tourism industry. The latest figures we have are that there are quarter of a million backpackers working here in Australia on the 417 visa program and a further 10,000 of them on the 462 visa program, many of whom are working in the north of Australia.

This government has a priority about creating job opportunities not for locals, not for local young people, but for people who are here on temporary work visas. And just to demonstrate how committed—or addicted—this government is to creating job opportunities for young overseas people here on working holidays, it proudly promoted in a press release, as recently as 19 June 2015, that it was improving the vital working holiday program to include allowing backpackers to work for 12 months instead of six months for a single northern employer, and a small number of these would then receive a second year. The government quite proudly promotes that it is going to streamline and make it easier for these overseas backpackers. It is extending the work visa holiday program.

Why this is a problem and why I seek to raise it is that the government is making it easier for young overseas backpackers to work here in this country in the same areas that are in the midst of a youth unemployment crisis. In Townsville in July 2015, the latest figures show, youth unemployment was up to 19.7 per cent. In Cairns, also part of northern Australia, youth unemployment is 22.1 per cent. So more than one in five young people in Cairns is unemployed and cannot get work. Yet this government is seeking to streamline and make it easier, to encourage more overseas workers to come in and take these local jobs.

If this government were serious about creating jobs in northern Australia, it would be serious about creating jobs for local people. It would not be seeking to use the temporary work visa program to bring in overseas workers, when we know there are locals available. It is disappointing that this government, in this motion, has not outlined how it is going to create local jobs.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have just heard from the squeaky voice of the union movement with all of the usual lies that we hear about foreign workers taking jobs in this country. What arrant nonsense we have just heard. They get up here and they tell us, 'This 417 visa is absolutely terrible.' But did they have it in the life of their government? Did they allow businesses to use it? Of course they did. We are talking about backpacker workers. These backpackers come in and they do work in industries such as fruit picking, where the farmers find it near impossible to get Australian people to come in and work. Then, when they are not working, what do the backpackers do? They do similar to what they do in my area, where they go and fruit-pick in Bowen and then they go an hour down the road to Airlie Beach and they spend the rest of their time in bars, on the sea on adventure cruises and that sort of thing—actually pouring money into the tourism industry.

This nonsense about backpackers taking Australian jobs is complete and utter nonsense. If the Labor Party want to come to this chamber and say they are going to end it, then get up and actually say that. Get up and say that, because you will have a farming movement that will breathe down your necks about where they are going to get the labour from to actually pick the fruit off the trees and pick the vegetables out of the ground. More importantly, you will have the tourism industry breathing down your neck as well about where the extra dollars are going to come from if these backpackers are not coming to Australia.

The Whitsundays, which is a collection of 74 islands—parts of the Great Barrier Reef and adjacent coastline in my electorate—offers some of the most iconic tourism opportunities in Australia that those backpackers come to see. There is the reef, teeming with marine life; the islands; the dense rainforest; wildlife; and the white sands of Whitehaven Beach, this year ranked by TripAdvisor as the ninth-best beach in the world. What the Whitsundays has to offer can compete with the world's best and attracts visitors from around the world.

But the potential for growth in our tourism industry is enormous. Domestic tourism in the Whitsundays last year saw half a million visitors, and only a third came from outside of Queensland. International tourism in the Whitsundays last year brought another 189,000 visitors, spending a combined 1.3 million nights, mostly from the UK and Germany. While UK visitors have declined 21 per cent from the previous year, there is strong growth from France and Canada. The looming growth for the international holiday market is from China, with visitor numbers to the Whitsundays rising almost 70 per cent, from a very low base. While the Whitsundays offers a world-class destination, it attracts just a nine per cent share of total visitors to Queensland.

The government has recognised the potential of places like the Whitsundays and has outlined plans for tourism growth in the northern Australia white paper.    We have put forward actions for targeting that growth, including $13.6 million to extend management advice and other business support services to northern tourism businesses, under the Entrepreneurs' Program, extending similar services to around 500 businesses in the North by lowering the minimum turnover and operating expenditure threshold to $750,000. We have cut red tape on things like souvenirs and exports of low-risk species. We are looking at options to streamline and expedite processing and extend the length of CITES permits for commercial trade in low-risk industries, such as the crocodile industry. We are expanding the working holiday maker visa program to allow participants to work for longer in high-demand areas in northern Australia—like fruit picking, where Australians just simply do not want to do the work—with a small number allowed a second year on their visa if they work in agriculture or tourism.

The white paper also identified direct flights into Cairns International Airport as a driver of industry growth in that region, and we have facilitated international flights at the Townsville. Airports in the Whitsundays and in Mackay are looking at similar ventures to open up more tourism as well as the export of product from the North. Water quality is also an issue in the Whitsundays, and we are doing work on that. We have committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the Reef; $140 million to the Reef Trust, which is charged with innovative and targeted investment to improve water quality. We will get water quality improved in the Whitsundays. We are doing a lot to promote northern development and to create northern jobs for Australians and not just backpackers.

Debate adjourned.