Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

This is an important and timely question. Just this week the Minister for Tourism, Mr Ferguson, officially opened the first-ever Tourism Directions Conference here in Parliament House. As minister assisting I also released at the conference the first state of the industry report. There are many positive indicators in the report at what I would have to acknowledge is a difficult time with challenges for the tourism industry. In the face of the global recession, where we saw global international tourism drop by approximately four per cent, the total number of visitors to Australia in 2009 remained unchanged at 5.6 million visitors spending some $23 billion. Tourism contributes some $33 billion to the Australian gross domestic product. It directly employs half a million people. It is Australia’s largest service export industry, representing eight per cent of Australian exports. Forty-six cents in the dollar of tourism is spent in regional Australia, so it is very important from a regional perspective and also for small business. Small businesses make up some 90 per cent of the tourism sector.

In the context of regional benefits, a further benefit is that many overseas visitors commonly known as backpackers fill gaps in the employment market that would otherwise be hard to fill in our low-unemployment environment. They extend their stay in regional Australia and work in industries such as fruit picking and meat processing. What is not commonly known is that backpackers are amongst the higher per capita spenders of the visitors who come to Australia. They spend some $5,753 each, so the money that they earn in our economy is returned to the economy. (Time expired)