According to our friends at Travel Weekly, organisers of Travel DAZE 2020 it is reported that AFTA CEO Darren Rudd said that Australia’s PM assured him on a video call last Friday that there will be an announcement this week about financial support for agents, travel wholesalers and tour operators, which AFTA and its members have been fiercely lobbying for.
Rudd added apparently “And he put a footnote if it wasn’t sorted this week, which I suspect means that it’s going to Cabinet tomorrow, and then hopefully we’ll get an understanding of what it looks like”.
Rudd also said that since speaking to federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg about his assumptions underpinning the Budget, AFTA has opted for a 12-month – rather than an 18-month – bridge back to business and essentially moved from a $125 million ask for sector-specific support to a $250 million ask, saying, “There’s been a range of discussions with Treasury and with [the Department of] Finance since the Budget, working through a range of scenarios, configurations, and feeding a whole lot of data”.
He said he hoped that they would get an indication if not [Tuesday] evening, then by Wednesday, of what the package looks like, adding, “So, the Prime Minister is acutely aware, the Cabinet are acutely aware, different politicians of all colours and persuasions are acutely aware of the need for this sector to survive and be funded to that end.”
Rudd did warn agents though that while government revelations are very positive news, not to get overly excited that the package would end up being “hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars”, as “the government may have chosen a different formula completely to what we’ve proposed”.
An edited from Travel Weekly report by John Alwyn-Jones
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