AFTA update

From AFTA’s chief executive, Jayson Westbury

OUR friends across the ditch are in for some entertaining times with the new NZ Government finally being formed and a new Prime Minister in Jacinda Ardern. The Prime Minister is just 37 years old and will be the youngest leader of the NZ Parliament in over 150 years. The Prime Ministership was handed to Ardern by an MP named Winston Peters who is the leader of the New Zealand First party and he along with his eight colleagues decided to back the Labour party lead by Ardern to form a new “coalition” government. It is not the same sort of “coalition” government we have in Australia as the parties are from opposite sides of the house.

Arden was made the leader of the NZ Labour Party just seven weeks before the election was held and while she and the Labour party did not actually win the election, they did win government off the back of the support of the NZ First Party. Sound familiar? It’s colourful stuff really, and just goes to show that our friends across the ditch seem to have found a way of making politics as entertaining and suspenseful as we do here in Australia.

Unfortunately for the travel and tourism industry, the Labour party does have a policy to bring in a NZ$25 tourism tax meaning effectively an increase in the same thing as our Passenger Movement Charge. This would result in over NZ$25 million more tax being paid by Australians who choose to go to New Zealand and given the competitive nature of airline pricing, once again the tax imposed is likely to make up more than the fee a travel agent gets paid for the flight.

Our NZ industry friends at TAANZ along with other tourism associations are already on the case talking to the new government about why this is a bad idea, both from the point of view that tourists (over a million Aussies per year) will not be pleased and may change their minds about going to NZ, but also the pure economic impact that a fee of this level slapped onto a ticket has. As with all these things, AFTA will continue to maintain a close eye on the process, engage with our colleagues in NZ and support as we can to get what is clearly a bad policy changed before any harm is done to the NZ tourism industry.