Page 3840 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 19 September 2017
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8.5 million visitors to the year ending March 2017. This has resulted in record spending of $39.8 billion in the Australian economy to March 2017.
Tourism provides a source for growth across Australia’s capital cities and regional areas. In the Canberra context, China remains our largest international market. For the year ending March 2017, some 45,000 Chinese visitors arrived in the ACT, accounting for 21 per cent of the total international visitor arrivals in our city and representing a 25 per cent increase over the previous year.
All state and territory tourism ministers, with the exception of Victoria, attended the tourism ministers meeting. The discussion focused on a range of initiatives to help the tourism industry maintain its competitiveness. These initiatives included: labour and skills reform to support the tourism industry as a major employer of Australians; data and research to inform the development of the next long-term tourism strategy; importantly for Canberra, a discussion on aviation capacity and access, particularly acknowledging the 2016 agreement that removed all capacity restrictions between Australia and China for airlines of both countries, creating unlimited growth potential for Australian tourism, trade and investment; infrastructure investment and regulatory reform, to ensure that Australia remains competitive and can meet the needs and expectations of visitors to our capital cities and those dispersing into Australia’s regional areas; visa reform, to make it more responsive and easier to understand and navigate for international visitors; and, finally, a discussion on marketing and the importance of producing effective, coordinated marketing campaigns to drive international demand for Australia.
The tourism ministers meeting in Beijing provided the ACT government with up-to-date information on Australia’s trade, investment and tourism policy and strategy in relation to China, as well as providing an important understanding of China-to-Australia tourism from the Chinese perspective. Ministers received an update from Tourism Australia on their marketing activities—in particular, the events delivered and planned as part of the China-Australia Year of Tourism. The meeting also provided a platform to exchange ideas with other state and territory tourism ministers, to join together in growing our international visitor economy for the benefit of the country as a whole as well as for the respective states and territories.
Specifically, I took the opportunity to raise the importance of aviation in the context of the Hong Kong-Australia free trade agreement negotiations, and the opportunity that this presents to attract airlines to regional airports. I also congratulated the New South Wales government on their very wise selection of the Snowy Mountains region as their regional focus area for Austrade and Tourism Australia’s five-year regional tourism infrastructure investment attraction strategy, which, due to its close proximity to us here in Canberra, will present additional opportunities for the Canberra region. It is worth noting that we, of course, nominated the Canberra region as our regional focus—the city of Canberra and the surrounding areas—so we will be able to partner very effectively with the New South Wales government in support of this regional tourism initiative.
On leaving Beijing—I was there for 38 hours or thereabouts—the delegation flew home via Hong Kong. This visit focused on promoting infrastructure, property and
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