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It has been a big week of announcements to further tighten health and safety measures as well as significantly boosting the economic support available to individuals and businesses impacted by coronavirus. Particularly relevant for our industry, was the Prime Minister’s announcement of a new $130 billion JobKeeper Payment to keep more Australians in jobs and support businesses affected by coronavirus. Find out more about the Government’s Economic Response here and about the health and safety measures here. Tourism Australia has pulled together a ‘one-stop-shop’ summary of the various different forms of support available on our corporate site as well as Frequently Asked Questions that we are updating regularly. The announcements have generated many questions as business work through what this means for them. I would steer you to your industry associations as they are fielding many similar questions and may be able to help.

As with many organisations, the coronavirus crisis has forced Tourism Australia to review and re-evaluate all aspects of our business. Whilst much of our marketing activity is currently on pause, we are still continuing with a lot of work behind the scenes. This includes continuing to train Aussie Specialist Agents in our key markets, creating new content for our online platforms, working with journalists on a whole range of media stories and continuing with appropriate social media activity. We need to be ready to go back and go back at scale when the time is right. We are already working on this recovery strategy, including how we reactivate aviation capacity, how we get the global distribution system firing again and the most appropriate type of campaign activity in a post-coronavirus world.

We are also continuing with our weekly webinar series . Last week we were joined by almost 2,000 people for our first webinar with Australia’s Tourism Minister, Simon Birmingham, and the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth. Our second webinar will be held this Friday 3 April, from 2pm to 3:30pm. I will be joined by Prime Minister, the Hon. Scott Morrison MP, who will give an update on Australia’s response to the coronavirus. We will also have representatives from the Treasury, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office answering questions on the different forms of government support available for individuals and businesses. Register for the webinar here.

Please take care of yourselves and your community during these tough times.

Phillipa Harrison