We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples and the Traditional Custodians of Ngunnawal Country, the land on which we meet today. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and emerging.
A big thank you to sponsors for your support of the forum.
Senator David Pocock
- I campaigned on a platform based on how to do politics differently
- I want to thank you for what you do for Canberra, we should have.a sense of pride, share why we love this incredible place
- Tourism is important for our economy - covid has hit this hard
- Acknowledging the tourism strategy - recognising that the goals set out may have been disrupted by covid
- Convention centre and stadium projects are important for our community - appreciate the pressure on the budget - there are investors keen to pitch in, and projects only get more expensive as you go into the future
- New infrastructure would give us a better shot at bids for world-class events, we have Canberrans travelling to Sydney to attend music events and the like
- We have to call for vision and ambition - push for the kind of infrastructure that will last a long time into the future - precincts for people to enjoy
- Please get in touch with any of your ideas, thank you for everything that you do
Question - "Do you actually go to bed at night and dream about a stadium?"
- If you look around the world, the standard is obviously stadium precincts, easy to access by public transport, give people an electric game day experience.
- Canberra seems to have it's back to the lake, we could open that up
Question - 'What size stadium do you think we need?"
- We want something we can fill, balance this and compromise with the types of events you want to draw, smaller may limit some of those big events
- The stadium in Dunedin has an amazing atmosphere and completely changed the experience for crowds and the players.
Question - "Do we have any chance of getting money from the Commonwealth for a new convention centre?"
- We talk a lot about defence and cyber, if we could host conferences about these, in a convention centre that is really secure and you can host these types of events, it makes sense for the nations capital
- We need to be clear on what the Canberra community wants and reinforce that we are the national capital – push for pride in the function that Canberra serves. The Prime Minister lives in Canberra for the first time in a while which may help.
Question - "You have friends in high places - are you well positioned and can you positively use and grow your power?"
- I hope I can build and use my connections and power to push for the right things
- Referencing the shift in more people being employed outside the public service now, we are seeing this shift. We are a city in our own right, we deserve the same attention and funding that we see elsewhere
Rob Stefanic
Secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services Parliament House
- The department is a bit of an enigma
- The Department has 1100 people and 3 main purposes: 1 allow the Parliament to operate, 2 be a custodian of Parliament House, 3 foster engagement with Parliament
- 750,000 tourists visit each year
- One of few parliaments in the world that is open to the public
- During the pandemic we realised we need to do more to attract local visitors
- We are using data to understand visitors better
- Rethinking how we engage the tourism sector
- Interesting in long-term sustainable growth of tourism economy
- Data is helping to build quality experiences for visitors
- We learned that people are making a decision to attend parliament house the day before despite being in Canberra for over a week on average
- We expanded our tours offering, which is the highest rated of our activities
- Next school holidays we will be offering more tours, based on our most popular school tours but tailored to regular visitors
- We learned that we need to increase our visibility and become more prominent in tourism marketing platforms
- Our social media channels are too formal and not engaging people, 97% of visitors do not follow us
- We want to enhance our social media channels, as well as open a new online shop which will feed into socials
- Covid has shifted tourism to independent quality experiences where people keep health and wellbeing in mind
- The research showed interesting data about the overall spend of visitors to Canberra, of which only around $100 if spent at the Parliament House venue
- Exciting new products such as souvenirs etc made in Australia that speak of the parliament its architecture and the Canberra region
- We take our role as an iconic Canberra venue seriously
Question - "You report to the leader of the Senate and president of the house - are they supportive?"
- They are new, so have a steep learning curve at the moment. They seem engaged and supportive with the strategy. With the shop we have been able to go ahead and make the changes, looking at making physical changes to the footprint, shop is at the exit, we want to make a more open shop.
Question - "Are you going to get an increase in budget to help achieve the goals of this strategy?"
- No. We are aiming to increase our revenue though.
Jonathan Kobus
Director of Visit Canberra
- Have started one on one interviews for the 2030 Strategy – part of gathering the collective views of the industry and a critical path to develop a roadmap
- Looking forward to sharing the information
- Trying to win back our tourism visitor economy
- Floriade is coming up! 16 Sept - 16 Oct, its a huge program of 4 consecutive weeks, Nightfest will be back, entertainment, food and stalls. It’s very exciting as it is 3 years since Floriade ran at its full capacity!
- There is an advertising campaign to promote Floriade
- We are seeing more visitors from south east Queensland, this will be further helped by a flight promotion between Canberra and the Gold Coast
- 1 Oct, reopening of Canberra as an international aviation hub with Qatar airways recommencing flights. We are working with Qatar to make sure Canberra is noted as a destination on that Melbourne route.
- Thank you for all your support and happy Spring
Credits:
Created with an image by lynette wong/EyeEm - "ILLUMINATED CITYSCAPE AGAINST SKY DURING SUNSET"