E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
5AA MORNINGS WITH LEON BYNER
FRIDAY, 23 OCTOBER 2020

SUBJECT: COVID-19 recovery support for the travel agency sector.

LEON BYNER, HOST: Yesterday in the parliament, a very passionate speech was made by my next guest. And he was talking about travel agents. And he talked about the fact that, quote, if they're not the hardest hit, no other group is harder hit than them. The small, medium business sized businesses of the travel agency sector. Now, you can understand why that is the case. Because through COVID, we've had a situation where state and federal governments have made a lot of rules, all of which have impacted heavily on tourism. And so we've had an absolute rush of people wanting refunds. And, that's exactly what needed to happen. But, of course, one ought never forget that the travel agency business in Australia does a hell of a lot for the economy. It employs a lot of people. So let's talk to the Shadow Government Services Minister, Bill Shorten. Bill, tell me - and good morning - tell me why you raised this so passionately in the parliament yesterday?

BILL SHORTEN, MEMBER FOR MARIBYRNONG: Well, having been locked down in Melbourne for such a long time, I guess I'm very switched on to what's happening with COVID-19. And whilst I know some parts of Australia, including South Australia, are regrouping and moving on, for a lot of sectors of the economy there's ongoing damage. And I met a bunch a group of local travel agents. If you close your eyes for a moment you can realise there’s a travel agency in every high street in Australia. And these, women mainly, there were some men, very impressive people. They are very committed to the experience of their customers, that they have on holiday. And what's happened is, and I didn't really fully appreciate how they structure their business, but when you book a holiday with a travel agent, they will then get your money and then pass it on to the wholesalers and then the hotels and the airlines and what have you. But they get paid by commission. And so what's happened is that since the international borders in particular have closed, they have no income. But what they've been trying to do is get something like 10 billion dollars back for the people who’ve booked fares. They also have to repay the commission that the travel agents made. So what we've got is a group of small businesses who are essentially working for nothing. In fact, if they get the money back, they have to hand back their commission as well, so that the holiday makers and the travellers can get all their money back. So it's a very difficult situation.

BYNER: What do you think the government ought to do? And I ask that question because I'm not somebody who necessarily wants to wrap everybody up in an army blanket. But the fairness here is that governments have created the circumstances where these people now can't operate their businesses and could lose them. I would have thought there is an obligation here to ensure that these people are somehow compensated, at least looked after to the point where they can survive until this clears up. It could still be some months away.

SHORTEN: Yes. It's still ongoing, especially with international borders. So I know some people say oh, you know that's just bad luck. But this isn't just bad luck. You’re right, it’s the intervention of a pandemic, it’s the intervention of government policy. So talking to travel agencies, I think they do have some fairly common sense propositions for the government to consider. One is that this JobKeeper program has been successful. But I think the government's going to need to continue that beyond December, I mean, the borders, international borders aren't going to reopen on the 1st of January. But there's still work to be done by travel agents. And if they're not to just basically leave the industry and we then don't have people to help us and instead we just rely on international foreign travel platforms like Expedia, if we want to keep a bit of dinky di in the travel industry, JobKeeper. I think that landlords who are pressing some of these agencies and franchises to pay the going rate, the 100 per cent rent, as if there's been no change to the business of the tenant, I think the landlords need to just reflect on that and there needs to be support for the travel agent. I also think that - and this is again, this is low hanging fruit I would have thought - that where state governments are doing voucher schemes for tourism, that they do it with the local travel agency industry rather than just global multinational platforms like Expedia. That could be something the South Australian Government, for example, could consider. They also are looking for some sector specific funding in the form of some grants. I think it'd be good to help these businesses move much more quickly to the online world and also to promote domestic Aussie tourism. One thing which I would say and I'll finish on this, is that the Budget had a proposal called a Loss Carry Back provision, basically what that means is you offset this year's losses that you would pay against last year's tax that you paid when you were making a profit so it evens out. The problem is, that only helps about 14 per cent of the travel agency industry, the large corporations. If you're a unit trust, a family trust, a sole trader or a partnership, you miss out. So I think that there are things that can be done, which we're already doing, and just with a bit of savvy, a bit of sit down and detailed listening, we can keep the high street small businesses in action.

BYNER: Bill, thank you for coming on this morning. That's the Shadow Government Services Minister.