According to the article below, tourism in Australia is really hurting.
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/tourists-head-for-the-exits-20110915-1kaxp.html
First, not as many tourists are coming to Australia due to poor economic conditions throughout the world. Second, Australians are not vacationing in Australia but going overseas due to a strong Aussie dollar. Third, flooding and other natural disasters have scared tourists away from Queensland.
If you are to listen to the Australian Minister for Tourism, Australians "should" be patriotic and not travel overseas. Instead, they should travel around their own country.
I think this guy needs to:
1. Quit his post of a federal minister as he is too stupid to run anything important as witnessed by his comments,
2. Visit some Australian hospitality establishment, evaluate the quality of the offerings, service and pricing and compare that to equivalent destinations in Asia and Americas to find out the REAL reason why Australians travel overseas,
3. Take an Economics 101 class to figure out how an intelligent person would resolve this type of situation.
I get perturbed EVERY time a 'Buy Australian because it is Australian even though it is more expensive and of poorer quality' excuse is used. If you keep buying those Australian products that are inferior and more expensive than imported products, you are being inefficient with your money and are supporting an unproductive industry. With an unemployment of 5%, I think we can afford to stop making certain items in Australia and switch to things that cannot be imported (like education, services, and construction). It is amazing how expensive manual labourers are here. Plumbers and electricians are being paid better than engineers and programmers.
There are simple and effective ways to deal with many of the problems that ail several industries in Australia. Prescribing a 'Buy Australian' approach is just prolonging the inevitable correction in those industries and making that correction even more painful and costly in the future.
