Page 2765 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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In addition to Floriade and Starry Nights, the government continues its investment in tourism. There is over $340,000 in this budget for the events assistance program, shared between a number of local tourism events. Some of those include the AFL Masters National Carnival, Summernats and the Foreshore Summer Music Festival. Each of these events has great potential to attract visitors to the region and again bring direct benefits to the local economy.
In 2009-10 support was provided for events such as the Australia Day celebrations, the Futsal national championships, the Australian Open squash championships, Canberra Challenge triathlon, the Canberra half ironman triathlon and the Canberra International Music Festival. The government will continue to support these events through the events assistance program, another key element of the tourism budget.
We will also continue to invest in our online presence, better linking visitors from around the globe to ACT tourism businesses. The government will continue its investment of more than $1 million in the Canberra Convention Bureau to help target the highly lucrative business tourism market. It is expected that this market will inject more than $23 million into our local economy in the next few years.
We will also continue to support the infrastructure needed to grow tourism in the city. We recently announced plans to release more land for accommodation, most particularly low-cost accommodation. Sites at Braybrook Street in Bruce and near Exhibition Park in Watson will provide for more low-cost accommodation into the future. The government is also planning to release land at Stromlo forest park and the Lyneham sports precinct in the years ahead.
I have taken an active role at a national level in working with other tourism ministers. (Second speaking period taken.) The government continue to be engaged in the national long-term tourism strategy. Tourism ministers met in Canberra about eight weeks ago to sign off on 41 practical actions to progress the national long-term tourism strategy. We have also agreed to allocate an additional $2.2 million in funding to implement this strategy. It is worth noting that this funding is the first time tourism ministers across Australia have jointly funded projects to develop a broad range of supply issues. It complements the marketing and support initiatives in train for the tourism industry.
I thought I would just briefly run through some of those important national long-term tourism strategy priority actions, as they are particularly relevant to the ACT. In the area of labour and skills we are working to progress findings and data around regional needs for tourism labour and skills. We are working to establish a uniform national approach to the responsible service of alcohol. We are looking at impediments to the transferability or recognition of training qualifications across all Australian jurisdictions; looking at the area of investment and regulatory reform; looking at a review of regulatory barriers to tourism investment and identification of key priorities; looking at a review of depreciation schedules that apply to the tourism industry; a review of GST impacts on commercial accommodation versus serviced apartments; and, particularly important and a crossover in my portfolios, the development of tourism definitions for planning schemes to assist in tourism development approvals.
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