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The Australian Tourism Industry Council (ATIC) has thanked the Australian Parliament for passing the $130 billion JobKeeper payment scheme.

ATIC notes that while the Tourism Industry has highlighted the issue of a large casualised and seasonal workforce which help deliver Australia’s global leading tourism product, and one that includes many workers with temporary visa status, this is clearly an unprecedented package that’s right for the times.

ATIC notes that “the JobKeeper scheme will provide much needed support to hundreds of thousands of tourism enterprises and their permanent workforce as the industry collectively faces the darkest of times.”

ATIC represents thousands of local tourism enterprises, where a feature of the industry is over 90% of 300,000 still registered tourism businesses are small to medium enterprises and sole traders that collectively employed 1 million people prior to the COVID-19 crisis.

ATIC Executive Director Simon Westaway said the JobKeeper payment scheme is a lifeline and offers real hope to Australian tourism enterprises for them to stay resilient, stay sustainable and be able to look to a future recovery.

Westaway added “JobKeeper can help preserve the productive capacity of Australian tourism enterprises. And what will truly do so is our country soon getting on top of COVID-19.

“We naturally urge the Federal bureaucracy to efficiently meet the first scheduled payments to eligible businesses designed to keep their people during the first week of May.”

Westaway urged eligible Australian tourism businesses and associated not for profit organisations within the visitor economy to apply for the payment online and if able to register their interest to do so via ato.gov.au

Image: Noosa Beach on the Sunshine Coast

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