Page 1423 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 11 May 1994
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MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (3.28): I welcome the opportunity that Mr Stevenson has provided to tell the Assembly again what the Government is doing in the way of attracting more international visitors to Canberra and to ensure that we do maximise the opportunities presented by the Sydney Olympic Games in the year 2000. Members will know that tourism in Canberra employs some 9,000 people and many of them are young people. We are very keen to explore all potential opportunities - I stress all potential opportunities - to increase the number and the range of jobs that are provided in this area.
Mr Deputy Speaker, direct international flights to Canberra are only one way of bringing international visitors here. I would like to make the point that Canberra is already a destination for international airlines. Qantas is an international airline and it brings international passengers from other cities to Canberra all the time. Ansett has a code share arrangement with United Airlines which effectively includes Canberra as a point on United's global network. Ansett has international rights to fly to Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand, and these will be progressively developed within the next 12 months; so Ansett also will become a designated international airline. Both airlines transport passengers from other international airlines.
We should also note, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the airline industry is changing the way in which it operates. There are two major changes going on. There is an increasing trend towards what are called hub and spoke airports in the United States, Europe and Australia, and this will increase as aircraft become larger. As passengers are off-loaded onto smaller interstate aircraft, airlines are able to streamline their schedules and avoid the very steep cost of flying part-empty jumbos on domestic legs. Sixty-three per cent of all international visitors to Canberra come through Sydney at present. The other major hubs in Australia are Brisbane, Cairns and Melbourne.
Hand in hand with that hub and spoke development is seamless or painless transfer, the process whereby passengers are transferred to and from domestic flights with the minimum of inconvenience and the minimum loss of time. Eventually this will mean that domestic timetables will be much more closely coordinated with international arrivals and departures, and that domestic and international flights will operate from the same terminals in the hubs. That, of course, will increase the efficiency of transfers enormously. In fact, Canberrans going overseas now will notice that this is partly in place. Ticketing, luggage and boarding passes can all be finalised at Canberra Airport, and that avoids queuing for a second check-in at Sydney.
The Government is examining ways in which we can attract more international visitors to Canberra, whatever mode of transport they choose, be it air, road or rail. As Mr Stevenson has pointed out, there were some 254,000 international visitors to Canberra in 1992-93, and only 32 per cent of them came by air. Forty-one per cent came by vehicle and 25 per cent came by coach or bus. We do need to ensure that there are efficient ways of bringing visitors to Canberra by road especially, and also by rail.
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