While NSW sports minister Stuart Ayres obsesses with sports stadiums in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, regional tourism organisations are withering on the vine.
The recent and unedifying Sydney sports stadium debate has an unfortunate side story – the neglect of Mr Ayres’ other areas of responsibility, particularly regional tourism.
Regional tourism has been all but forgotten under the Baird-Grant government, despite the fact that it brings in $12.9 billion to the NSW economy and supports over 150,000 jobs.
In his capacity as minister for tourism, Mr Ayres has delayed and delayed again finalising a substantial review into the funding and organisation of regional tourism organisations.
While the industry continues to wait for the review – now seven months overdue – Mr Ayres has been silent.
Meanwhile, one operator responsible for promoting tourism across most of north and western NSW has gone into voluntary administration, while others are fighting for their survival.
Inland NSW Tourism called in the administrators earlier this month after encountering difficulty accessing grants from the government.
The Baird government must finalise the review and implement any recommendations immediately to assist tourism operators in regional NSW.
Mick Veitch MLC, shadow minister for western NSW and Penny Sharpe MLC, shadow minister for trade, tourism and major events
If you follow the money you will observe the following:
Destination NSW, the body responsible for distributing the State’s funding employees 188 FTE employees. Buried in the back of their annual report for 30 June 2015 (page 87) they paid $17.5 million in wages to distribute $4.5 m in grants.
Report can be found here: http://www.destinationnsw.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Destination-NSW-Annual-Report-2014-2015.pdf
They are sitting on $28m of tax payer money (up from $10m the year before) because their not releasing any funds to the organisations that need it.
Now i ask you, why is the state paying the CEO of this organisation to literally not distribute the funding, and head a bloated organisation that costs >$17m to distribute $4m in grants? It’s an absolute disgrace!