Portfolio Media

Martin’s big new tourism “strategy” – the tribe has spoken

05 February 2010

THE tourism industry has given the Rudd Labor Government’s Long-Term Tourism “Strategy” the thumbs-down it deserves, says Shadow Tourism Minister Steven Ciobo.

Mr Ciobo’s comments follow survey results showing the industry was decidedly cool on the supposedly momentous, badly named National Long-Term Tourism “Strategy” unveiled by Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson in December.

“The industry has had time to digest the Minister’s vision for the industry and deemed it yet another bland and uninspiring meal from the Rudd Government, big on garnish and low on substance,” Mr Ciobo said.

“Here is a ‘strategy’ which took two years to cook up, and all that resulted was a bunch of bureaucratic platitudes for an industry looking for some real leadership from the Rudd Government.”

The Tourism and Transport Forum’s MasterCard Sentiment Survey showed almost half of the tourism operators surveyed couldn’t care less about the “strategy”, with only a third finding anything positive to say.

“The industry, like I, is probably dumbfounded by a ‘strategy’ which was two years in the making and only came up with new bureaucracies, not a cent of extra funding, re-announcements and a whole new glossary or Ruddesque verbal varnish,” Mr Ciobo said.

“The industry, like I, was probably bewildered by the language of the ‘strategy’ which was stacked full of ‘facilitations’ and ‘frameworks’, of ‘issue-specific working groups’ and ‘problem-solving mandates’.”

Mr Ciobo said the “strategy” was yet another chapter in the Rudd Government manual on all-talk-no-action government, which spoke a lot of babble but delivered little tangible direction for the industry.

"The Jackson Report provided a terrific launching pad for the Rudd Government to start from, but the resulting 'strategy' was effectively a wasted opportunity. The only bums on seats resulting from this strategy were more bureaucrats.”