Damian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Will the minister update the House on the importance of the tourism industry to our economy and in creating jobs for hardworking Australians, especially those in regional communities? Is the minister aware of any threats to our vital tourism industry?

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Murray for his question about the Australian tourism industry, because Australia's tourism industry is flourishing under the coalition government. We've got a record number of tourists staying for a record length of time and spending a record amount of money—no doubt buoyed by the fact that the coalition are providing record funding for Tourism Australia. We're doing so because we recognise the importance of Australia's tourism industry. It generated some $39.8 billion worth of export income over the 262 million nights that international tourists spent in Australia during the last year. In particular, we are very focused on the benefits that flow to regional parts of Australia off the back of tourism. In fact, in the member for Murray's electorate some 3,029 people are employed directly in the tourism industry across some 1,500 tourism businesses.

The coalition take tourism seriously, and we recognise the value of the industry. But we do unfortunately see from time to time some threats not only to Australia's tourism industry but to tourism across the board. Right now, with 45c in every dollar of tourism spending going into regional parts of the country, we want to make sure that that continues. But when we look around the world, we do see threats, and in particular we have seen in Europe the rise of some anti-tourism and other protests taking place. We have seen examples of where extremist groups have been pushing for people to slash the tyres of tourism buses, and to slash, for example, the bikes that tourists can hire, as a pushback against tourism. These actions have been labelled as extremist. But what we see in this country are supportive measures that are made for these kinds of extreme protests.

We've seen the head of the ACTU, Ged Kearney, tweeting in support of these protesters against the tourism industry, and the reason that's important, the reason why we need to be very aware of the impact of these extremist elements of the trade union movement, is that the trade union movement basically owns the Australian Labor Party. There are 10 million reasons why the Australian Labor Party consistently listens to the views of the Australian union movement, and that reason is that it is the unions who pay the bills. We need to know that Australia's tourism industry simply won't be safe or protected if extreme examples of Australia's union movement are supporting these kinds of activities against the tourism industry. We know fundamentally that the Leader of the Opposition says, as Labor leader, 'I still think like a union organiser.' We need look no further than his activities as Leader of the Opposition to see the character of this man. As Leader of the Opposition, he has done a whole range of things to sell out people to get ahead. He sold out Kevin Rudd, he sold out Julia Gillard, he is prepared to sell out the mining workers of Australia by taking money from the AWU, he'll sell out union members for Cleanevent and he'll sell out Australia's national interests to work with the New Zealand Labour Party. (Time expired)