Tourism Australia hit with $24m funding cut despite recovery years away

Convincing international tourists to travel down under is set to get a whole lot harder with funding for the country’s peak tourism body slashed in the budget.

Pleas have been ignored from tourism industry leaders to boost funding for the organisation responsible for marketing Australia to international travellers, budget papers show.

A substantial cut in Tourism Australia’s funding from $208m to $184m was attributed to “the end of Covid-related additional tourism marketing campaigns as international travel resumed”.

Figures for February showed short-term overseas arrivals were still 35 per cent below what they were in 2019, a year after borders fully opened.

The disappointing figures prompted the Australian Tourism Export Council to call for more investment in marketing the country, pointing out the industry was still in recovery mode.

It appeared the calls went unheeded with tourism not even rating a mention in the Treasurer’s budget speech and no new initiatives to support the $120bn industry.

A previously announced Indigenous Tourism Fund of $17m over three years would “increase the supply of First Nations tourism experiences” in partnership with the states.

Despite its funding cut, Tourism Australia maintained its staffing levels at 207 full-time equivalents and pledged to “continue to invest in the Come and Say G’Day campaign globally”.

Launched in New York last October, the $125m campaign featuring a toy kangaroo voiced by actor Rose Byrne, was intended to drive the fastest recovery possible.

By June 30, Tourism Australia expected to be halfway there with international visitor expenditure of $22.7bn in the preceding 12-months, or just over 50 per cent of pre-Covid tourist spending.

That figure was forecast to rise to $32.5bn in the next financial year, and reach $50.2bn by 2027.

At the same time demand for Australian passports was expected to taper off in coming years after the production of a record 2.6 million last year in the wake of borders reopening.

Although some “volatility” in demand was forecast to continue this year, funds for passport production and passport services were set to significantly decrease in the years ahead.

In a further setback to the recovering travel industry, domestic and international airlines faced higher charges for aviation weather services from next year.

The budget measure was designed to deliver an additional $50.2m in revenue over the next four years and “ensure essential aviation meteorological services were appropriately funded”.

Regional airports stood to benefit from a further $13.5m to fund critical upgrades to remote airstrips, and an extra $56.8m was allocated to support and review the functions of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, Australian Transport Safety Bureau and Australian Marine Safety Authority.

For the ATSB, a $4m boost to the overall budget to $35m would help fund 15 extra staff as the bureau struggled under the weight of more than 90 active investigations.

The resourcing boost was designed to help deliver more timely investigations in line with set performance targets.

Currently short investigations were taking over a year instead of the seven-months targeted, and complex or systemic investigations were averaging almost three-years or 32.1 months instead of 20-months.

Budget papers also noted that current funding arrangements for CASA would remain in place with revenue from aviation activity including a 3.5c a litre fuel excise still a long way from pre-Covid levels.

Adding to the funding challenge was CASA’s increasing role in the regulation of drones or remotely piloted aircraft, which did not contribute to the fuel excise model.

Originally published as Tourism Australia hit with $24m funding cut despite recovery years away