Pressure mounting on the government to extend support for the tourism industry

Queensland’s tourism sector is begging for financial support to be extended ahead of JobKeeper ending in late March.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese says financial support for Aussie businesses is being withdrawn too early as the tourism industry continues to suffer from border closures.

Mr Albanese, who is on a six-day tour of Queensland, said the sector was doing it tough because revenues had fallen dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic.

He is calling for more assistance ahead of the government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy ending on March 28.

“What tourism operators have said to me is that they need support,” Mr Albanese said on Tuesday.

“The government is prematurely withdrawing support.

“Wage subsidies keep those connections between an employer and their employees.”

Mr Albanese visited the Cairns Skyrail on Sunday. Picture: Stewart McLean

Mr Albanese also attacked Tourism Minister Dan Tehan, who he said made a visit to Cairns without making any promises.

Mr Tehan was in the Whitsundays on Tuesday visiting tourism businesses with Coalition backbencher George Christensen.

“Dan is coming here to listen to the plight, to the concerns of the tourism sector,” Mr Christensen said.

Mr Tehan said 660,000 jobs in Australia were maintained by the tourism industry.

He said the government had offered support to businesses and employees right across the nation and, while there were challenges, there would also be opportunities.

“I want to make sure we’re continuing to provide help and support to the tourism sector,” Mr Tehan said.

“The hope is that by this time next year we would see international travel resuming at pace.”

In the meantime, Mr Tehan said the industry would also be helped by the vaccine rollout and a uniform approach to hot spots – to prevent rapid border closures – would help boost Australia’s confidence to book domestic travel.

“If we can get our vaccine rollout occurring on our timelines we should be in a very strong position to get tourists back,” he said.

Mr Tehan also revealed he planed to speak with the Japanese tourism minister about establishing a travel bubble with Australia to help the Queensland tourism sector.

“If they can manage the Olympics and manage it successfully and their own vaccine rollout and we manage ours, there is no reason why we couldn’t get a bubble up and running,” he said.