House debates

Monday, 18 June 2007

Committees

Economics, Finance and Public Administration Committee; Report

4:54 pm

Photo of Michael KeenanMichael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise also to talk about the report that we are discussing here today which has been created by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration and entitled Servicing our future: inquiry into the current and future directions of Australia’s services export sector. Before I go on to my contribution, I was listening to the first few minutes of what the member for Batman had to say in his speech, so I thought I would rise and take issue with some of the points that he made which I thought were wrong and over the top. But I will not do that, because I am just in such furious agreement with the second half of his speech, where he talked about the report that was brought down by the Australia Institute. I see why he has a reputation, at least on our side of the House, for bringing a very commonsense perspective to some of these issues. His contribution was excellent.

This report makes 14 recommendations. I wanted to concentrate primarily on the first six, because recommendations 7 to 14, which deal a lot with the tourism industry in Australia, have already been extensively canvassed by the first five speakers. So I wanted to concentrate in my contribution on recommendations 1 through to 6. The first recommendation is that the government encourage more research into the services sector. That is a reasonably sensible recommendation. We hit something of a fork in a road as a committee about which direction we would take when we were framing this report. We could have taken the road of, maybe, increased government intervention or possibly suggesting that the government should spend more money doing this or that. But what has been taken in this report is a far more sensible approach. We have opted to enhance the efforts of the private sector that are already occurring and making the services industry such an important part of the Australian economy. Rather than coming in with a very heavy hand of government, these recommendations have something of a light touch. They are more about encouraging the government to coordinate. Recommendation 1 is a good indication of that.

Recommendation 2—one that I know has pleased my colleagues on the other side of the chamber today—about the creation of a minister for services is very much in that vein. We are not recommending that the government do exciting new things or take incredibly large initiatives in the services sector, but we are saying that it would be worth while for the government to have a look at the services sector and see if there is some way that we can help to coordinate things better. The creation of a minister for services would obviously be a step in that direction.

Recommendation 3 is, in my view, the most important recommendation of the committee. It is important because it deals with a factor that is heavily weighing on the Australian economy at the moment. It is, without a doubt, the No. 1 complaint that business has brought to me as the member for Stirling. That is the labour shortage, sometimes referred to as a skills shortage. The reality is that, because we have a booming economy, we are literally running out of people to work in that economy. People consistently come to see me in my electorate to complain that they cannot find workers, particularly in some of the traditionally lower paid occupations such as aged care, hospitality and of course all sorts of occupations that you would find within the tourism industry. It really is now a critical issue. If you cannot find the people to work in the economy, you cannot continue to expand the economy.

I was worried that as a committee we might squib this one, because there might be some different political imperatives for the members on either side of the committee, but I think what we have come up with is very sensible. We recommended that the government institute a process whereby more permanent migrants can come to Australia. I actually do not have a strong view about whether the migration to Australia is permanent or on a more short-term basis, but other members of the committee felt that it was important to have migrants come on a permanent basis as opposed to coming on any temporary basis. I think it is so important to solve this problem that I really did not think it was worth while taking issue about whether people come here temporarily or permanently. The most important thing is that we solve the problem and get more people here. This is a very good report. All the recommendations are worth while, but it is really vital for the government to take notice of recommendation 3. I am going to be very pleased to take this report back to my electorate and discuss it with some of the business people who have come to see me on a regular basis, begging me as their member of parliament to do what I can to encourage the government to allow more labour to come to Australia.

Recommendation 4 talks about having some more emphasis within international trade negotiations on the services sector. A lot of players within the sector were of the view that, when we come to negotiate both multilateral and bilateral trade agreements, we as a government place more emphasis on manufacturing and agriculture, which belies the fact that services is actually the largest sector of our economy. Players within the services industry felt that there needs to be more emphasis placed on the services sector within those negotiations. There is evidence to suggest that that would be a very sound thing for the government to do.

Recommendation 5 was particularly championed by the member for Moncrieff, and he has discussed it within his contribution. It is for the creation of a Brand Australia. We were given a number of examples where governments have done this quite successfully; the Italian example was one. It would promote Australia as a homogenous brand, as opposed to promoting different sectors of Australia, if you like. Australia would benefit if we were to do that in a more coordinated way.

Recommendation 6 is a reiteration of a plea that we heard from many players within the sector that the ABS provide more data from the services sector, particularly regarding its place in international trade.

In the remaining few minutes I will move on to the other recommendations, recommendations 7 through 14, which deal primarily with tourism. Recommendation 7 asks that the government has a look specifically at the inbound tourism industry. There was some concern within the sector that tourism has not been growing or that we have not been maintaining the rate, particularly from some markets, of inbound tourists. A lot of that, of course, has to do with the fact that the Australian dollar is currently so strong, which has a negative effect on Australia as a destination, particularly on the Japanese inbound tourism market, which is mentioned specifically in recommendation 10.

Recommendation 8 is about rogue operators within the tourism industry. Sadly, we as a committee heard evidence that rogue operators were not policed in an overly vigorous way. Members of the committee had received representations quite heavily, particularly members from Queensland—and the chairman was also terribly concerned—that the ACCC was not using its powers to properly police rogue operators in the tourism industry. The committee urges the ACCC to take another look at that and to increase the frequency with which they take compliance action. Importantly, we decided not to do this by putting a whole new layer of bureaucracy on the tourism sector. There was some discussion within the committee about doing that. I personally felt that that would be very unfair on the vast majority of tourism operators that do operate within the law.

I think recommendation 9 is the second most important recommendation of the committee. I could not agree more with the member for Batman’s contribution about this. We should not subscribe to some Eurocentric view that penalises hardworking Australian exporters, and we should not fall for the line—that the EU seems to be pushing very heavily at the moment—that somehow Australia should be penalised for being a long way from the rest of the world. We have really got to be alert to that sort of nonsense. Again I concur very strongly with what the member for Batman said.

Recommendation 10, about the Japanese market, I have already touched on. The depreciating yen versus the Australian dollar is obviously a substantial problem there. Recommendations 11, 12, 13 and 14 are very important to the tourism and education sectors and, specifically, coordinating between the two. I thank the chair and the other members of the committee for their work in producing a very worthwhile report. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Mr Baird) adjourned.

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