Stuart Henry (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is fantastic. When driving along the length of West Swan Road years ago, you would have been lucky to pass a cafe. You may have been able to drop in to a couple of wine cellars for a drop of wine tasting or see sultanas drying in the drying sheds. I think there were only a couple of restaurants in the area at that time.

These days there are many good restaurants, cafes, wine cellars, boutique brewery operations, chocolate factories and cheese factories dotted throughout the valley. Indeed, Spring in the Valley is a great festival and is held at a wonderful time of year to celebrate the development of the tourism sector in Western Australia. Some 50,000 visitors visit boutique breweries and enjoy fine food, wine and music, as well as the arts and crafts on offer.

Indeed, it is very pleasing to be able to make this speech today while the Mayor of the City of Swan, Charlie Gregorini, the Deputy Mayor, Mel Congerton, and Chief Executive, Mike Foley, are visiting Parliament House in Canberra. The Swan Valley boasts some extraordinary restaurants and wineries, such as Sandalford Wines, with its annual program of bringing music to the valley, as well as the Riverbank Estate Winery, which I had the pleasure of visiting only recently.

It is not just in the electorate of Hasluck that the impact of the skills shortage is being felt. As the report indicates, it is being felt right across Australia. There is a need to address it, and many of the recommendations in the report go a long way towards doing that and ensuring that we develop a much more professional tourism sector than we may have had in the past.

Tourism helps define who we are. It enhances our Australian nature, our natural environment, our cultural diversity and our ecotourism. It puts genuine Aussie ingenuity on display for not just our neighbours but travellers from around the world. Along with other programs and campaigns that we have developed, we want to look our best and be at our best so as to encourage by word of mouth return visits. In 2006, there were 635,000 international visitors and six million—a huge figure—domestic visitors to Western Australia, with a combined expenditure of some $4 billion. The tourism dollar has been steadily growing, apart from a slight drop in the early 2000s.

It is well known that the hospitality industry is experiencing a very difficult time in filling vacancies. I have been able to assist some constituents—restaurateurs and people running hospitality venues—in my own electorate of Hasluck with advice on 457 visas and other options to help ease this labour problem. This report makes a number of very worthwhile recommendations, such as data collection and analysis to provide for comprehensive workforce planning. Recommendation 11 details the visa extension of up to two years for overseas tourism and hospitality students who comply with education and training conditions. This would be a sensible and an attractive option to assist in alleviating the current shortfall in some of these fields.

I agree with the member for Werriwa, who just spoke on the report, about recommendation 12, which recommends the establishment of an industry leaders forum to promote career choices and opportunities in the industry. As a result of a review carried out in 2005-06 of the separate training packages for those in the hospitality and tourism industries, it was recommended that those packages be combined into one package. A new package was then developed with extensive industry consultation. It has been formally endorsed by the industry but has not been unanimously endorsed by the states and territories. I urge those states and territories to endorse it so that we can overcome some of these difficulties and ensure that some of the recommendations of this report with respect to vocational training and education in the tourism and hospitality area can be implemented. All the recommendations are sensible and should be implemented to address the skills shortage. I look forward to that occurring.

With some 22,700 people commencing Australian apprenticeships in tourism in the 12 months to March 2006, a range of measures have already been put in place to make apprenticeship systems more accessible, including more flexibility for the delivery of on-the-job training components and incentives for employers who offer employment related training, including mid-career apprenticeships and higher technical skills announced by the Prime Minister in the Skills for the Future package.

We have a lot to do, but quite clearly this report addresses a number of critical issues in the tourism industry. I believe that, if the recommendations in the report entitled Current vacancies were implemented, they would go a long way towards addressing that outcome. I commend the report.

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