Call to fight campaign threatening Australia’s UK tourist market
An AAP report says that Australia’s aviation sector and the tourism industry must fight an environmental campaign to stop British travellers making long-haul flights, the federal government says.
Federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey said the campaign, aimed at combating climate change and masterminded by environmental lobbyists Greenpeace, Airport-Watch and EnoughsEnough.org, threatened to erode visitor numbers from the United Kingdom.
The UK is Australia’s highest-yielding foreign tourism market, last year generating $3.1 billion.
Full-page advertisements in UK newspapers claim flying “is a killer” and “one of the single most important decisions you can take to stop climate change”.
The ads feature two characters, a penguin and an evil airline executive, from fictitious organisations Penguins Against Climate Change and Spurt.
While the penguin says “so please, from one flightless species to another, keep it on the ground”, the executive criticises the “tofu mafia” and insists he has “shareholders to think about”.
The ads also claim aviation will account for 20 per of UK emissions by 2030, and encourages Britons to holiday at home and use the train.
“If it (the campaign) were to take hold and really take off it does have the potential of affecting our market,” Ms Bailey said.
“It’s totally misleading, so I’m cranky about that, but also I suppose in a way it gives us the opportunity to get out there into the public very early into this debate exactly what our credentials are.”
Ms Bailey urged the aviation sector and the eco-tourism industry to “get on the front foot” and swiftly refute the damaging campaign.
Ms Bailey said despite a public perception that aviation was a major carbon emitter, it contributed only two per cent of the world’s emissions.
She also said Australia was a world leader when it came to eco-tourism, featuring about 800 tourism businesses with full eco-tourism accreditation.
“First thing, what I’m saying to the aviation industry is you need to establish your credentials and say exactly what the real story is – don’t allow this false impression to take root out in the community,” Ms Bailey said.
“And the second thing is to establish Australia’s green credentials.
“They (tourism operators) need to be talking about this more.”
Ms Bailey said tourists had to be informed they were “coming to a country that takes it’s environmental responsibility seriously”.
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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