Get the red tape gorilla off your back
09/12/11
Federal Shadow Tourism Minister Bob Baldwin today launched an online survey for tourism and hospitality operators in a bid to reduce stifling business red tape.
Mr Baldwin said; “as a former tourism operator myself, I will make it my business to identify any measures, at any level of government, that make conducting tourism and hospitality businesses slower, more difficult, or both.
“This means those measures that require tourism and hospitality business owners to fill out paperwork, obtain licenses, deal with multiple people or committees to approve a decision or navigate the complex rules.
“We know the tourism industry faces a disproportionate regulatory burden impacting negatively on investment. Tourism's multi-use nature means investment is often affected by a variety of regulations across a number of agencies and is not well understood by officials,” Mr Baldwin said.
The Coalition has identified that the dominance of small business in the tourism and hospitality space means the industry is less able to absorb the costs of delay caused by regulatory complexity. 85 percent of tourism and hospitality businesses are small to medium sized enterprises.
The regulatory barriers faced by the tourism industry include planning, environmental, labour shortages and general business regulation and span across a range of areas and levels of government. Planning schemes are particularly challenging for the industry.
Mr Baldwin said that governments and the bureaucracies that report to them should be focused on making business easier, and should regularly review red tape and other burdens that advantage overseas tourism competitors. He also highlighted that a future Coalition government would better use the COAG process to drive improvements to business red tape.
Results of the survey will inform both the Coalition’s Industries for Australia’s Future review (which will conclude this year) as well as the Coalition’s Deregulation Taskforce (which will report mid-2012).