Page 2785 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 September 1994
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Tourism and Accommodation Industry
MRS GRASSBY: My question is also to the Chief Minister. Can the Chief Minister advise the Assembly of what the real state of the tourism and accommodation industry is in the ACT, in light of the selective quoting of ABS statistics by the Leader of the Opposition, Mrs Carnell, earlier this month?
MS FOLLETT: Yes, I am afraid, Mr Acting Speaker, that Mrs Carnell got her figures wrong yet again in her pronouncements on the tourism industry. She did indeed, as Mrs Grassby has said, quote very selectively - in fact, one line out of an entire document. She quoted that way in order to give a very misleading impression of our ACT tourism industry and to talk down the local industry. There is no doubt about it; that is what she was intending to do.
In fact, Mr Acting Speaker, the latest Bureau of Statistics figures on tourism in the ACT indicate that over the past year the Territory has performed very strongly indeed in all major indicators in the tourism area. They have all shown strong growth. I will give just a couple of examples. The room occupancy rate for hotels, motels and guesthouses rose from 58 per cent to 62 per cent - a very good figure. Guest nights increased by 4.9 per cent. The room nights occupied increased by 6.6 per cent. The average length of stay rose from 1.9 to 2.1 days. That is a very good figure because it has been an aim of our tourism industry to try to increase people's length of stay in the Territory. The bottom line in all of this is that the takings from accommodation showed a very strong increase of 8.4 per cent. They went up from $15.9m to $17.2m.
All of those facts are in stark contrast to the very bleak picture that Mrs Carnell tried to convey. Mrs Carnell, as I said, used the figures very selectively. In fact, she had to admit that herself on Capital Television. She had to say that she did not know where her figures had come from, and she had to admit that those figures were misleading. I wish that she would admit that more often, because it is very often true. As an interesting side issue here, Mr Acting Speaker, Mrs Carnell also put forward the view that she felt that the tourism budget for the Territory should be boosted by some $5m and that that money should be taken from the health budget and by contract from our ACTION services. Mr Acting Speaker, the hypocrisy of this approach is virtually breathtaking. If anybody, even the most casual observer in this Territory, had listened to Mrs Carnell's pronouncements on health matters recently, they would be absolutely amazed and horrified that she is now intending to take money out of the health budget and spend it on tourism promotion, an industry which is doing very nicely, thank you - doing extremely well - without that kind of assistance.
Mrs Carnell, I think, would do very well to take a leaf out of what is happening in the tourism industry, look at the strategic partnerships that are being formed, and look at the way that the promotion and marketing dollar is being maximised. With limited resources, Mr Acting Speaker, it is the responsible way to go. Mrs Carnell says, "We will spend more; we will spend more; we do not care where it comes from. We do not care if it comes out of the health budget. We do not care if we have to put up taxes". "No, no, no", she says, "we would never put up taxes; we just want to spend more money". Presumably, it is just plucked off the money tree.
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