Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A year ago, I gathered 300 Blue Mountains tourism businesses together to hear what they needed to help recover from devastating bushfires. They needed cash injections to help attract visitors and support to create new things to inspire people to come back for more. They got some of that—only some of it—before COVID hit, and, most recently, have missed out on fast-tracked grants because of political favouritism by the New South Wales Liberals. Thank goodness the Morrison government listened to the pleas of businesses and workers and our plea for wage subsidies, which have kept many of these tourism businesses on life support. Scenic World has revealed that it had a 75 per cent drop in visitors, and that's played out right across the local Blue Mountains tourism economy.

Yes, businesses have pivoted. They've adapted. They've re-invented. But Blue Mountains Tourism tells me that many operators are back to bare bones and jobs have been lost. Those lost jobs are nothing compared to what they fear will happen when JobKeeper ends, because this government refuses to recognise that a sector heavily dependent on international visitors cannot replace them with domestic visitors. These businesses want to keep employing local people. They want to keep the rest of the local economy ticking over. If the government refuses to extend JobKeeper, those job losses and business failures will lie at the feet of people who only pretend to be the friend of small business.