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Not only because of confusing and variable content in announcements made by varying government Ministers, the fact that Prime Minister, but Scott Morrison also said in the budget scenario that international travel would not restart before the end of 2022, is having a massive ripple effect through the industry and its sectors.

The whole scenario he has created demonstrates that Morrison and his Ministers have no understanding whatsoever of the tourism industry and its sectors and in Morrison’s case in particular, that should be surprising to us all, as he was Director of the New Zealand Office of Tourism and Sport from 1998 to 2000 and was Managing Director of Tourism Australia from 2004 to 2006, although varying unconfirmed media reports have over time commented that he may have departed both organisations under rather a cloud!

According to Wikipedia Morrison served as State Director of the New South Wales Liberal Party from 2000 to 2004, with in 2004, Morrison left the post to become the inaugural managing director of Tourism Australia, which had been established by the Howard Government, with his appointment said to be controversial due to its openly political nature.

He is reported to have approved and defended the contentious and controversial “So where the bloody hell are you?” advertising campaign featuring Lara Bingle, but his contract was suddenly terminated in July 2006, which his departure at the time reportedly attributed to conflict with then tourism minister Fran Bailey over the government’s plans to further integrate the agency into the Australian Public Service.

Strangely though, he had reportedly been awarded a pay rise by the Remuneration Tribunal just three weeks before his sacking, with a 2019 investigation by The Saturday Paper suggesting Morrison was sacked due to concerns that Tourism Australia was not following government procurement guidelines for three contracts relating to the “So where the bloody hell are you?” campaign, with a total value of $184 million.

A 2008 report from the Auditor-General apparently found that “information had been kept from the board, with procurement guidelines breached and private companies engaged before paperwork was signed and without appropriate value-for-money assessments”. It was also apparently suggested that M&C Saatchi, which had previously worked with Morrison on the “100% Pure” campaign in New Zealand, received favourable treatment in the tendering process.

Wikipedia says that this episode and more generally, his career in marketing led to his satirical sobriquet, “Scotty from Marketing,” originating with the satirical magazine The Betoota Advocate in August 2018 and it was taken up on Twitter in early 2019, spiking at the height of the bushfire crisis on 29 December 2019, with in January 2020 Morrison referred to the name as a “snarky comment” used by the Labor Party to discredit him.

So, getting back to his tourism experience, it could be reasonable to expect that considering that Morrison having worked for both Tourism New Zealand and Tourism Australia he might have a better understanding of the industry and its sectors, but it appears that might be hoping too much, with Morrison and his government’s announcements sounding the potential death knell of international inbound tourism for some time and for certain, potentially outbound tourism and at least the travel community.

In the meantime, as a result of the chaos created by Morrison and his Ministers, Virgin Australia has put on hold on most of its short-haul international flights, including Fiji and Indonesia, reportedly, until at least December 2021, with QANTAS having already announced that it was putting on hold the previously planned reintroduction of international flights from the 31st October 2021 until 19th December 2021.

Virgin Australia has also said it will though continue with the introduction of its Boeing 737 flights from Sydney and Brisbane to Queenstown in NZ from 18th September and Melbourne to Queenstown effective from the 7th of December, but due to what they describe as subdued demand for other New Zealand destinations, they will defer other New Zealand flights in addition to flights to Vanuatu, Samoa and the Solomon Islands.

What a mess and the question I ask is why Morrison made any predictions at all about the restarting of international travel.

Why?

Because, he simple does now know when  international travel can return, so why make an predictions at all, because that is what they are and no more – simply crystal ball gazing!

Worst of all Morrison and his Ministers have no plan, criteria, strategy or it appears anything else upon which to base their decisions, which it appears they pull out from nowhere, much like the disastrous vaccine rollout stuff up, which is the root cause of the failed restart of international travel in the first place for which Morrison is totally responsible.

If only we had a Prime Minister that had hands on experience in the tourism industry and it sectors, he or she might know what they are doing and most of all the impact of what they and their colleagues say and the decisions they make….hang on we have one and it is simply a disaster.

An opinion report by John Alwyn-Jones Special Correspondent Aviation, Travel and Tourism