Traditionally, the snow industry has been a major employer of full time and casual employees in my electorate.  This is not just on snowfields themselves but also across a range of other tourism, hospitality and retail businesses.

However, there has been a devastating collapse of these businesses’ patronage and turnover as a result of the various COVID-19 restrictions.  Exacerbating these problems is the near-universal lack of financial support currently available to the industry from all levels of government – with widespread ineligibility even for the Federal JobKeeper program.

I therefore ask: what practical actions will the Government be taking to provide new, urgently-needed assistance to the snow industry and the businesses within (and dependent on) it that have now lost many millions of dollars during the COVID period?