Page 2004 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR SPEAKER: What about me?
MR BARR: Perhaps the market for speakers of Australian parliaments is somewhat narrow. Nonetheless, should there be future conventions for speakers, then look forward to them being here in the ACT. That is an initiative I would welcome.
I think the other thing we need to look at is further developing our relationship with Qantas. I was very pleased to see the increase in capacity that Qantas put on the Canberra-Sydney route recently. That is a very welcome initiative from Qantas. They certainly have a major role to play in bringing visitors to our city.
I think overall, though, we have to be sensible about the money we expend on tourism. There is not a magic multiplier effect. The law of diminishing marginal returns applies to expenditure on tourism. I know that the tourism industry do not want to come to me as rent seekers, as people who cannot make a profit in their own industry without government assistance, and that there is no future for tourism if they are rent seekers—none at all.
Perhaps as a broad philosophical bent, I am not a big supporter of industry policy. I do not see that industry policy is particularly useful, all in all. I think that, in the end, the best thing for government to do is to get out of the way, most of the time, for the private sector. There is no particular advantage in government business welfare. I see no value at all in that.
Mrs Dunne interjecting—
MR BARR: It is disappointing that there are some on the other side who seem to be totally beholden to the rent seekers. They see their agenda in public life to go round seeking handouts for particular sectors. I do not see that as necessary in tourism at all. I think some of the best tourism initiatives have occurred where the private sector and those operators in the industry have got together of their own accord and produced particular initiatives that have been very successful.
One I would point to in what has traditionally been a lull in the Canberra events calendar is the Fireside Festival. The local vineyards and some of the local restaurants got together and produced a fantastic website. They had a targeted marketing campaign particularly for people from Sydney coming down to the snow to spend some of their time in Canberra on their way through here. The campaign was directed at their attending events at lunchtimes on Fridays, on Friday nights or on Sunday nights at some of our fine vineyards and restaurants in the region.
It is in its second year this year, as it kicked off last year. It is a fantastic initiative. I encourage all members to participate in it. It occurs in August. Members would have seen, I think it was in the Sunday Times winter events calendar for the territory, that that festival is taking place. It is a great initiative.
The interesting thing is that it did not require a huge amount of government assistance, if any. That is the sort of stuff we need to see—a little bit of innovation, a little bit of
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .