Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President Griff, I know you are one person who would have been amazed and dumbfounded by the government's proposed package for the tourism industry last week. Anybody who has been to Far North Queensland will understand how much devastation has been caused to the tourism industry as a result of the closure of our federal border. I'm not talking about our state borders here; I'm talking about our federal border. The federal government decided to close that border. International tourists used to come to this country to see some of the greatest natural wonders in the world, like the Daintree, the Great Barrier Reef and all the magnificent places in our north.

The tourism industry was looking to the federal government to come up with a package post JobKeeper. The first observation I'd make about that is that JobKeeper ends in two weeks time. Whatever the government was going to propose to replace it, the logical thing would have been to do what the Labor Party suggested—that is, keep JobKeeper going in those industries that have been adversely affected by, amongst other things, the downturn in tourism. The government decided not to do that, but they were coming up with their own package. As we know, we saw Minister Tehan and the Treasurer go up to Cairns, and the best that the government could come up with was this so-called 'ticket to recovery', as the Prime Minister called it. Anybody who talks to anybody in the tourism industry, whether you're a hotel operator, whether you're a restaurant or a hotel or even an ordinary retail shop, knows that this package is not going to do the trick. It doesn't fit the bill for what the industry desperately needs at the moment. The industry was looking for some leadership from Mr Morrison and the Treasurer. The industry didn't get it from this package.

Can I give you an idea of how silly some of these proposals were? One of the proposals was to try and help Kangaroo Island, in my home state. Of course Kangaroo Island needs some help. They had terrible bushfires and terrible loss of life last year. You might even recall that the Prime Minister was unaware there had been loss of life on Kangaroo Island. Then they got hit by the pandemic. So they certainly need some assistance. The government decided that they would give out cheap tickets to Kangaroo Island. There are no international flights into Kangaroo Island. I don't know why; as a former tourism minister I approved an extension to the length of the airport in Kingscote which would have allowed for that. But for one reason or another there are no international flights.

The only way you can get to Kangaroo Island by plane is to fly to Adelaide. I can see Senator Hanson-Young is also shocked! The only way you can get to Kangaroo Island is via Adelaide; you can't get to it via an international flight. So the original proposal, which, we have now seen, is on the original website, included the concept of flying into Adelaide and then flying on to Kangaroo Island. But the incompetence of this government—when they finally announced their package, they left Adelaide off the list.