Page 2255 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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Mr Marshall, as chair of the Canberra Business Council’s tourism, arts and sport task force, would be lobbying for more money.
I suppose then the question one would pose in this area is: do you measure the success of the tourism industry off the back of the level of government subsidy that industry receives? The answer to that is no. If the tourism industry is to survive in the long term—I particularly note the views of the Tourism and Transport Forum—the industry itself has to look at reform and has to look at its own investment and its own economic future. Reliance on government funding alone is not a solution for the tourism industry in the long term. In fact, it is detrimental. As Mr Mulcahy very eloquently outlined in a debate on another but similar topic last night, sole reliance on government funding is bad for industry.
Whilst we acknowledge that, for the purposes of tourism, there is a level of market failure and that there is a level whereby we recognise that individual tourism businesses will be concerned about a free ride for their competitors if they invest in promotion of another jurisdiction and they then look to government, perhaps there are a range of other solutions that can be looked at to pool resources across industry. Other jurisdictions, for example, have bed taxes, and that is the way that industry contributes.
I am not suggesting at this point in time that that is a particular approach that the ACT government is considering, but, if industry wants to have a look at ways that it can contribute to the development of tourism in the ACT, it might want to consider some avenues for collective action, most particularly around looking at the structure of the various industry associations. I think there are at least three or four that claim to represent the tourism industry. Perhaps a consolidation and a pooling of resources across those disparate groups for a single industry view, given the size of this jurisdiction, would be a constructive way forward.
I will signal again, as I have said to the industry time and time again, a sole reliance on ACT government funding for industry initiatives is not a healthy future for the industry. Collaborative exercises such as the partnerships that we have in place, most particularly through initiatives with the airline industry, through our e-strategy, through the development of the five-year tourism strategy that I will be releasing shortly, through the five-year strategy for Floriade and through the event acquisition strategy that we funded last year as part of the reallocation of funding from the Rally of Canberra, will set forth an agreed and shared vision between government and industry for the future of tourism in the ACT.
That is the path that the government is progressing down. I welcome and certainly encourage further input from industry. I would like to acknowledge the already important contribution that has been made in a number of areas and look forward to being able to make some substantive policy announcements to conclude those pieces of work in the months ahead.
Just before I close on these matters, it is interesting to note, most particularly in the context of Mr Pratt’s contribution on this line item, that it appears that the ACT Liberal Party is a fraud. They are no longer Liberals; having “liberal” in their
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