Tourism minister backs penalty change push

The Federal Tourism Minister hopes a review of awards by Fair Work Australia will ease wage pressures on the hospitality sector.

Martin Ferguson told delegates at a national hospitality conference in Hobart he has received many appeals from businesses struggling to pay weekend loadings and penalties.

He said weekend and public holiday ''penalty on penalty" issues were a major obstacle for the industry in challenging economic times.

The minister said it was important the penalty provisions were considered in Fair Work Australia's review which was expected to be completed by the end of the year.

"That would go a long way to satisfying some of the difficulties that they've got at this particular point," he said.

"I hope the bench of Fair Work Australia has given proper regard to the input of the tourism industry in this context because I understand that is the key issue to industry at this point in time."

Mr Ferguson also told the conference negative views of hospitality as a career path were damaging the sector.

Recruiting, training, and keeping good staff remained a major challenge.

Mr Ferguson said the Federal Government had recently invested $8.5 million into improving hospitality and tourism skills nationally.

"Developing a better trained workforce is critical to our tourism industry reaching its potential as it helps us to meet the needs of increasingly sophisticated global customer market and, in doing so, hopefully ensure lucrative repeat visitation."

Source: ABC News, 5 September 2012