Levy worth thinking about

THE proposal from Hobart’s new Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds for a levy on visitors to our capital city should not be as quickly dismissed as it was by both major parties yesterday.

Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

THE proposal from Hobart’s new Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds for a levy on visitors to our capital city should not be as quickly dismissed as it was by both major parties yesterday.

The fact is that as Tasmania has become more and more popular, the infrastructure needs required to best service the increasing number of visitors to our island are growing. We saw this most dramatically last summer on Bruny Island, where the lack of toilets and bins for visitors led to some seriously unsavoury incidents. It is clear we are already playing catch-up.

And Alderman Reynolds certainly has a point when she says the costs should perhaps not necessarily fall solely to Tasmanians alone. As she says, if it is designed correctly a levy would hardly – if at all – be noticed by tourists and yet would have a big impact on the infrastructure and services that could be funded.

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Yes, we would need to guard carefully against any suggestion that the imposition of a levy meant we did not want visitors. But there are plenty of places around the world where “bed taxes” are applied and the tourists keep on coming.

While the infrastructure likely to be funded out of a levy would largely be a cost borne by local councils, it makes sense that one rule should apply across the state.

And when you do the numbers on that scale it starts to look pretty appealing. So let’s get out an envelope and write on the back of it . . . According to Tourism Tasmania, in the year to June 2018 there were 5.94 million visitor nights spent here last year. The average spend per night was $220. Now let’s suppose that as a state we impose a $5 a night levy on that accommodation price, less than a 2.5 per cent imposition on average – or the price of a large takeaway coffee. That would put $29.7 million in our collective kitty each year to help fund tourism infrastructure. That’s $30 million. Every year. Funded by visitors, on such a small scale they’d hardly notice.

To put that sort of cash into context, the promise made by the Liberal Party during this year’s state election campaign for infrastructure upgrades and maintenance in national parks was $24 million – and that was over four years. Our back-of-envelope visitor levy would deliver $120 million over that same period.

Tourism Industry Council boss Luke Martin yesterday labelled the visitor levy proposal a “bizarre attack” on his industry. He says we should instead consider different prices for non-Tasmanians purchasing National Parks passes. Yes, this should also be considered. Freycinet alone hosted 310,000 visitors last year. There are surely some extra dollars to be found in asking for a little more from those who are not from Tasmania. But then, it would be only fair that extra passes cash should be spent in national parks and our needs are actually far wider than that.

Perhaps another way to do this could be to consider the system in Noosa, where the council imposes a small levy on the rates it charges tourism operators, a cost that is then passed on to the visitors by those operators.

Whatever is the answer, the fact is infrastructure across Tassie is being tested by our popularity. We should be willing to have a proper debate about how to squeeze a little more from the tourists to help fund it.