WELCOME: FROM THE TICT
L
ast month, TICT held its Annual General Meeting, prompting our board to look back on an extraordinary 12 months for our industry and organisation.
I am so proud of how our sector has responded to the most difficult of circumstances over the past year and the resilience we have shown as an industry, and how we have worked together at all levels of the industry and across the State. As TICT Chair, I am also very proud of our organisation’s achievements and leadership over the past year and the considerable outcomes we have achieved for our operators. As a board, the TICT directors met frequently through 2020 in person and on Zoom. Despite each of us dealing with our own stresses and uncertainties in our own businesses and organisations, we managed to come together regularly through the year to shape our industry response to COVID. 4
In the very depths of last year’s shutdown, we worked constructively with State and Federal Governments in identifying the immediate needs for industry assistance and helping to shape the different support packages Governments made available. I want to particularly acknowledge the Tasmanian Government for its responsiveness over that difficult time in rolling-out assistance to businesses quickly and compassionately. We also worked strategically with the Tasmanian Government in developing the new T21 Tasmanian Visitor Economy Action Plan, to set a strategic blueprint for rebuilding our tourism industry over the next two years. I am pleased to see the T21 priorities really starting to rollout now, and the commitment from both industry and government to not just get us back to where we were before COVID, but also lay the foundations for our industry’s future over the next decade. TICT prioritised and lobbied for the extension of the Bass Strait Passenger Vehicle Equalisation Scheme and the ‘Free Car Fares’ that have filled the Spirits up over the autumn months. This has been an amazing success and we hope the extension will be now continued through winter.
While in the last few months we have advocated strongly to see a resolution to the uncertainty about the future of Bass Strait. We warmly welcomed the State Government’s announcement in March that it will proceed with commissioning two new purpose-built and forty percent larger monohull ships to replace the ageing Spirit of Tasmania ships.
