I'm sick of the blame game. Let's look at what happens next.
And what happens next is possibly a recession in Australia. Since mid-2018, our GDP growth has halved and household income has stopped growing and started contracting. In brief, we were in strife before the bushfire season.
Now, a major driver of employment and growth has been decimated. Tourism provides 1 in 13 jobs in Australia and adds over $60 billion to the economy. (Source: https://www.tra.gov.au) And 44c in every tourism dollar goes to the regions. Tourism is bigger than agriculture, forestry and fishing. The bush needs it.
The whole world has seen the pictures of Australia burning and have decided to stay away. Our brand as a tourist destination is, in the short term, stuffed. Starting with a 10% drop in hotels in December, bookings are being cancelled at a rate of 20% to 75%, depending on the service.
Disaster 1 is the bushfires. Disaster 2 will be the collapse of tourism businesses around Australia.
After this calms down, how do we get people out to the regions again, pumping tourism dollars into the regional economy?
