Page 3221 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 November 1992
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What is proposed, Mr Deputy Speaker, is that Canberra host the inaugural Opal Festival during Black Opal Week next year. (Extension of time granted) The Lightning Ridge Opal Miners Association has donated a $25,000 black opal as the main prize for the horseracing event, and a $4,000 black opal to the Smith Family, I might add. It is proposed that during that week the Lightning Ridge Opal Miners Association conduct an Opal Expo here in the ACT.
Mr De Domenico: Is this the official government announcement?
MR LAMONT: There is to be a range of announcements, Mr De Domenico. If you read my report, which was tabled in this house, you will understand the significance of this event for the ACT. I hope that all members of this Assembly, both sides of the chamber, will support this very important initiative. I believe that it will become the pre-eminent opal display and sales point in Australia. While there is often a throwaway line and a bit of a jibe at each other across this chamber, I believe that where that belittles a particular undertaking people should desist. I would suggest, Mr Kaine, that something as significant as this should be supported.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (3.58): I am not planning on speaking for too long, because I know that there are other members who want to speak on this subject. I want to sound a note of caution. Everybody seems to be terribly optimistic about how well the tourism industry is doing in this city. Mrs Grassby talked about the 1.3 million people who came here last year. That is fine. But Mrs Grassby did not go on to mention some of the other statistics in this interesting book. For example, if you look at page 11 - - -
Mr Berry: You want to be a nark.
Mr Connolly: He is talking about the risk of the GST to tourism.
MR KAINE: Mr Connolly might listen. He might learn something. If you look at page 11 you discover that over 50 per cent of the people who came here last year came for business or to visit friends or relatives. That has nothing to do with tourism. We have a long way to go before we can claim that 1.3 million people come to this city for tourism purposes. Just let us look at the figures. Even if the Tourism Commission did not exist, if this Government did not exist, over 50 per cent of those people would have come to Canberra for reasons totally unassociated with tourism. So, let us not pat ourselves on the back and say what a great job we are doing, because there are some gaps.
The other interesting thing is that marginally over 10 per cent of those visitors came here for special events. The Chief Minister has made a special ministerial statement on this matter. Mrs Grassby based her matter of public importance on all of the tourists that come to Canberra for these special events, but only 10 per cent of the people who came to Canberra out of that 1.3 million came here for special events. One would really ask: How good is the advertising for these special events?
For some further analysis, Mr Deputy Speaker, I refer to page 26 of this very valuable document. This tells us that we are not doing very well at all because, of those visitors who stayed in Canberra overnight or longer - that is about 80 per cent of the total - 44 per cent of them did not spend anything on accommodation. About 450,000 of those 1.3 million people did not spend a cent
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