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We’re almost halfway through the year and what an interesting year it has been both locally and globally. People often say they’re not interested in politics but it’s difficult at the moment to avoid it!
Increasingly, even those not usually interested suddenly have strong views on Donald Trump, global trade tariffs, proposed bed taxes in Queensland or cost of living pressures – and rightly so.
Being part of these discussions is the priority of Accommodation Australia as your peak body. And there is no better time to tell the story of our great accommodation industry than during this Federal Election campaign.
It’s one of the rare times when politicians of all stripes are out on the hustings, travelling the country and actually listening to the community.
The politicians stay in your accommodation properties regularly so don’t waste an opportunity to, politely, tell them what’s on your mind or what support you need.
We need to engage with all sides of politics and tell our story, because as an industry, we have a compelling one to tell.
The latest data shows nationally we employ 117,000 people as their main job – the highest number in almost 10 years. There are also another 30,000 working in our sector as their second job.
We know 40 per cent of these jobs are in regional Australia and more than 60 per cent are held by women.
Our industry generated tourism-related revenue of over $21.2 billion in 2023-24 and, along with the other sectors in the accommodation and food service industry, contributed over $60 billion in value-add to the Australian economy.
Most remarkably we did that while still recovering from the devasting impact of the restrictions imposed during the pandemic.
And we did it at a time when international holiday visitor nights are still 11% less than pre-pandemic levels and total international visitor arrivals are still 12% lower.
Long before the election date was decided, our Association was working on narrowing down our industry’s key priorities:
1. Boost tourism demand
2. Improve Training and Skills
3. The right migration settings
4. Regulation of Short-term rental accommodation
5. Energy, tax and small business support.
Tourism demand is an important one for us. International tourism to Australia grows when travellers are inspired to come – so increasing Tourism Australia’s funding to $200 million per annum plus $20 million for events is important.
We also need to facilitate an increase and diversification of international and domestic aviation capacity and competition so they can get here – including the new Western Sydney Airport.
The next two priorities, training and skills and migration, are two sides of the same issue - staffing.
We need to better train the people we have and also be able to supplement that with a workforce from overseas. We want to improve employer incentives to food trades apprentices and restore hospitality traineeship incentives.
To supplement our home-grown workforce, we would like to see a minimum of 47,000 employer-sponsored places per year within the permanent migration program.
Restaurant managers should be restored to the Core Skills Occupation List, and we should ensure all of the key skilled occupations vital to hospitality are eligible for sponsorship.
We need to also allow regional employers to sponsor all skilled occupations for temporary or permanent skilled migration.
Short Term Rental Accommodation (STRA) is a hot topic in the community, and it is also one of our key priorities. We need to improve housing availability and affordability by overseeing a national framework of State/Territory regulation of short-term rental accommodation.
We recommend a national registration system, a cap of 90 days per annum with scope for local governments to impose lower caps, as well as effective enforcement of the regulation.
It is no surprise to anyone running a business that we need incentives and subsidies to alleviate the increasing costs of energy and we need to retain hospitality industry access to gas as an energy source.
And finally, we should remove fringe benefits tax on legitimate business entertainment expenses and restore their deductibility (excluding alcohol costs) for small business, and increase the accelerated depreciation rate for accommodation properties to improve cash flow and support increased hotel refurbishment.
Don’t be afraid to make your voice heard this Federal Election if you find yourself side by side with a pollie – we have a great story to tell so let’s take every opportunity to tell it.
Kind Regards
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