Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That might happen. I am very pleased with the report Servicing our future. The electorate of Barker, which I have the honour of representing, is a little over 64,000 square kilometres. It is larger than Tasmania. When you go through the electorate you make your way past some of the country’s great treasures. The Murraylands region of my electorate has already been identified as a future logistics and transport distribution hub for South Australia because of its ideal location, only an hour away from Adelaide. It has certainly been easier to come in and out of Adelaide via Murray Bridge or the Murraylands as a result of the money that this government spent on the Heysen tunnels, which also made access into Adelaide safer. Because of its ideal location there is very easy access via road and rail to the eastern seaboard, which is very important in a country like ours. Tourism derives a significant proportion of the electorate’s economic dollar and opportunities for tourist and sporting events, businesses, cruises and retreats are growing and receiving international acclaim and media publicity. Of course, agriculture is also a very strong base for the Barker electorate.

Nationally the services sector is responsible for 75 per cent of this country’s outputs and 85 per cent of employment. Export services make up more than 20 per cent of total exports. It is surprising to some that this is more than rural exports and about on par with manufacturing exports. That is not to say that manufacturing or agricultural exports should be derided; in fact, they are very important to our economy. Without food, for example, we do not live. It is as simple as that. Without exporting food we would be producing probably 80 per cent more than our actual needs in Australia.

Inbound tourism is, at the moment, Australia’s biggest service export industry. It is among the top export earners across all industries and has set new records for arrivals and exports. Yet, despite this, for some time the services sector has been overshadowed by Australia’s goods producing industries, such as the agricultural and manufacturing industries, and by the much publicised mining boom. It is this committee’s view that the Australian government must give greater priority to the services sector by way of government acknowledgement and assistance and by way of media attention.

This committee was charged with the responsibility of identifying challenges posed to the services sector by the current resources boom and to highlight both issues and opportunities for the sector into the future. The Servicing our future inquiry suggests that service exports are likely to be of increasing importance to the Australian economy not just in the near future or the short term but in the coming years and decades. That time is fast approaching, but before it does this government and any other future government must be ready. We must have the ability to address workforce needs such as a shortage of skills and labour, which are already present in our economy. We need to tackle the significant competitive challenges on the horizon for the educational sector, the second largest services export sector, and to remove growth-constraining issues surrounding non-tariff trade barriers. Educational export services were brought home to me when I was part of a recent trade delegation to Mexico. We are certainly growing in that area. Many students are coming to Australia and we also have students in Mexico.

There were many recommendations. Innovation, particularly in the use of information technology, has been a key driver of productivity in the services sector. I hark back to my days at university when I was doing an economics degree. Even then they were talking about innovation. We talk about it a lot, but I think we need to recognise it even more. There has been little study done of the role of research and innovation in lifting productivity in the services sector. More could be and should be done in this area. Because of this, the committee recommends that the government commission research into innovation in the services sector and its implications for productivity.

It was also the view of the committee that the services sector would benefit from improved federal government coordination. We believe that the most effective way to achieve this would be with the introduction of a minister for services. Every member of the committee has mentioned that so far, so obviously they think it is pretty important. Such a role would provide a focal point for the services sector, recognising its increasing importance, particularly in terms of exports. This position could assume a generic responsibility for the sector, informing government policy on issues that affect all service industries. As well it could be responsible for coordinating research into the services sector and formulating a government strategy to ensure the continued expansion of service exports.

We also recommended that the government consider establishing a program of permanent migration to address shortages in lower skilled positions—and we chose those words very carefully—in industries like hospitality and tourism, and provide incentives for Australian and overseas workers to move to rural and regional areas where skills and labour shortages tend to be more severe than they are in the cities. Australia’s population is ageing, and we need to look to permanently boost the supply of labour in the economy. The committee is in favour of permanent rather than temporary migration of lower skilled workers. The focus must be on younger migrants to avoid increasing the problem of the ageing population. There is a significant shortage of workers at a skill level below that which is already covered by the current skilled migration program, so it is not so much, certainly in my area, a shortage of skills but a shortage of actual people and labour to do the jobs.

We also recommended that in all future bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations the government give greater priority to services trade issues. Where negotiations are stalled because of issues in one particular sector—for example, agriculture—the government should consider negotiating agreements for individual sectors.

Whilst we talk about Australia’s good record with the export of goods, we are lagging in international brand recognition. Like the member for Moncrieff, I am very passionate about our ability as an exporter of business services, for example, not being well recognised. We must broaden our international brand. The committee recommends that the government initiate a Brand Australia Council. This council would not take over the operations of promotion agencies like Tourism Australia and Austrade but would provide an opportunity for these agencies to communicate, to work together on promotion where possible and to investigate how our brand is perceived internationally and where it needs to be improved.

There are many other recommendations that are worth listing. Very quickly, they include: that governments, both state and federal, take proactive steps to eradicate rogue tourism operators; that the government commission an independent inquiry into the future of the inbound tourism industry; and that more resources be made available to the Australian Bureau of Statistics for improving its collection of data on international trade in services. (Time expired)

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