Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on this matter of public importance. What an absolute shambles this government's tourism announcement has been—an absolute shambles. First of all, within six hours of the announcement, new destinations had to be added. Adelaide and Darwin were added. We've heard from those who work within the broader tourism industry just how disappointed they are that, despite all the calls for action and support, for months and months now, they've been left with very little. It might help the big corporate airlines, but the small tourism operators right across the country are left with virtually nothing.

At the end of this month, those who have been relying on JobKeeper are not going to be able to rely on that either. So not only has tourism slumped in these places; the thing that has been keeping many people's heads above water is about to end as well. The government took its sweet time getting to a point of announcing any type of tourism package. Then, when it was put on the table, it missed the mark. It delivers for the big end of town but does nothing for small businesses in rural, regional and metro areas that rely week to week, month to month and season to season on tourism business and tourism dollars.

The other key element of the tourism industry that is still being left out in the cold is the arts and entertainment industry. Still nothing of any value has been put on the table by this government to support artists and entertainers across the country, despite the fact that it was the arts and the entertainment industry that was hit by COVID restrictions when the lockdowns first came in 12 months ago. Venues were closed, events were cancelled and people were out of work, and they are still out of work. Despite the constant calls for more support from the government, for inclusion in JobKeeper, for a specific arts and entertainment package, we still see nothing of much value from this government. Senator Farrell has already spoken about what a shambles even the announcement about being able to fly to Kangaroo Island was. I must say that everybody in South Australia saw straightaway what an absolute joke this announcement was. No wonder it had to be fixed in less than six hours of being made.

But overall, I ask this: at the end of March, when JobKeeper finishes, hundreds of thousands of people are going to have their wages cut or will lose their jobs, and what good is a holiday if you don't have a job? This government continues to miss the mark over and over again. Why did we see this announcement rushed out so quickly late last week? It was because the Prime Minister knew that Newspoll was out in the field last weekend. That's what this was about. This was about trying to buy some votes, buy some positive publicity, and they still stuffed that up. They splash around $1.2 billion and they can't even get it right—$1.2 billion in order to buy a bit of a bump in the polls when everything's going pretty shabbily on their side of government, and this Prime Minister still can't get it right. Well, Australians aren't silly and they're not going to be bought and treated like mugs so easily.

We know there are many people who are still doing it really tough. They've had their wages cut. They've lost their jobs. They're desperately waiting for the season to come back around so that they can invest in their tourism business or they can keep working in their casual job. And, rather than doing what the industry called for, which was an extension of JobKeeper, an extension of support across the board for the tourism industry, for the arts and entertainment industry, the government decided to look after the big corporates and the airlines and have a 'she'll be right' attitude for those small business operators and casual workers who actually do all the hard yakka. It is just unthinkable that the Prime Minister thought that this was going to be enough to satisfy workers, to satisfy the Australian people and to make people think they were serious about supporting the tourism industry.

The Prime Minister has to go back to the drawing board. We need a decent tourism package. We need support for small and medium businesses, sole traders, those who have been smashed economically because of COVID-19. Workers in industries that rely on tourism—arts and entertainment, hospitality—need to know the government are willing to look after them, too. All they're being told so far is, no, they're not. So the Prime Minister has to go back to the drawing board and come up with something better, because this ain't it. I ask again: what good is a half-price holiday if you don't even have a job? That's the problem the Prime Minister is not willing to fix.