Page 2018 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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Mr Corbell: Do you think the tourism industry is going to cease because we do not have a tourism corporation?
MR MULCAHY: Of course, people like Mr Corbell do not understand that that demand has to be supported by strong marketing interstate directed particularly at target groups. Mr Speaker, to take up the frivolous interjection from Mr Corbell, the industry will not cease if there is no marketing dollars, but we will see a decline in activity from the government abandoning the field and, effectively, sending a message to the rest of Australia that we do not think tourism is important enough to have its own authority running it and we do not think it is important enough to put skilled people on the board of our tourism body, but rather we will assign the whole thing to a group of employees in a government department.
Tourism is a specialised and highly competitive field, and we are missing out on opportunities that we should be, in fact, exploiting. In the convention market in particular, the most lucrative part of the tourism industry, we are way behind the eight ball. It is easy for people to say that we are not Sydney and we are not the Gold Coast, but smaller areas such as Townsville and places such as Adelaide that do not enjoy lots of natural assets have large numbers of people coming in. The Adelaide convention centre is full virtually every single week of the year, booked out, because they have been clever with their marketing and they have created massive employment.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.
MR MULCAHY: I would like to take my second 10 minutes at this point, Mr Speaker. Places such as South Australia have shown how, no matter what natural advantages you may or may not have, if you get your marketing right you can slaughter the convention market and do exceptionally well. If the South Australian tourist commission were packed up and put back into a government department, you would see very quickly the most successful convention centre in Australia in my view, the one in South Australia, start to slide.
But the government of South Australia is smarter. The Rann government in South Australia, to its credit, has enough sense to know that a state that does not naturally get tourists because of its geographic position or because it has iconic locations, such as New South Wales with the Sydney Opera House, Central Australia and the reef, needs to stimulate interest in tourism there because it flows through to the economy there. It has created employment for their young people, it is bringing taxes into that state and it is positioning them on the world map. The cycling contest in South Australia has given that state world positioning, but that has been done only through the focus marketing that has been enjoyed. It is regrettable that the Chief Minister and Treasurer has lost interest and left the chamber as we discuss this important area.
Mr Corbell: That is a cheap shot.
MR MULCAHY: It is not a cheap shot, because we are talking about the wellbeing of people in the industry in Canberra whose interests have been quickly dismissed by abolishing the one body that can help support and work with the industry to ensure that we have employment.
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