The South Australian Business Chamber proposes Centre-West Travel Triangle

Monday, 8 June 2020

What is the proposal?
The South Australian Business Chamber has joined forces with its fellow Chamber of Commerce in the Northern Territory to deliver a united call to open the borders between NT, SA and WA in a desperate bid to get their economies going again.

The aim of the Centre-West Travel Triangle is to provide a significant boost for businesses in each location, particularly those in the tourism sector, which have been devastated by COVID-19 border restrictions.

Why NT-SA-WA?
The best and safest way to open our borders is via those States and Territories which currently have flattened the curve and have low levels of active cases of COVID-19.

As at 1st of June, the proposed bubble jurisdictional case data is as follows:

• SA – 2 new cases since 22nd April, one active case in whole state
• NT – no active cases in whole territory
• WA – 40 new cases since 29th April, 29 active cases in whole state 

The tables below represent the economic impact of interstate travel for each of the proposed bubble jurisdictions. The South Australian Business Chamber has not included the ACT due to its lack of border control with New South Wales. Data is provided by Tourism Research Australia (TRA) for the year ending December 2019 unless stated otherwise.

*Data provided by the South Australian Tourism Commission.

*Data obtained from Tourism WA interstate profile factsheet and only includes leisure travellers (holiday, visiting friends and family) for the year ending June 2019.

The Premier wants to open borders to ACT and Tasmania, why not support that proposal?

The Centre-West Travel Triangle makes sense from a location point of view as well as an economic perspective.

Visitors from the ACT to SA are worth $50M to the economy and Tasmania $52M.

The NT alone is worth $88M to South Australia and when added to the $266M WA visitors bring to SA, the South Australian Business Chamber’s proposal to open up SA-NT-WA will deliver more than three times the economic benefit of the Premier’s ACT-Tasmania travel bubble. That is, $354M (the South Australian Business Chamber proposal) compared to $102M (Premier’s bubble).

South Australia’s regions also stand to benefit more in the Centre-West Travel Triangle scenario.

With the NT and WA borders neighboring SA, this opens the opportunity for the State to capitalise on the important self-drive market with easy access into our regions like Cooper Pedy. Places which would be all but forgotten from the fly-in, fly-out visitor from Tasmania and ACT.

While the Premier might be forgetting SA’s regions in his travel border plans, they are front and centre of the South Australian Business Chamber’s proposal.

Ultimately, the Centre-West Travel Triangle will deliver the biggest bang for buck for all areas of South Australia.

Premier’s Travel Bubble:

Additional Fast Facts:

The number of businesses that service the tourism sector include:

• 18,067 in SA
• 2,202 in the NT
• 28,751 in WA 

The number of people employed in the tourism sector:

• In SA, 40,500 direct and 23,200 indirect, 4.8% direct share of state employment
• In the NT, 8,400 direct and 7,200 indirect, 6.3% direct share of state employment
• In WA. 66,600 direct and 34.3 indirect, 5.0% direct share of state employment 

Tourism GVA (Gross value added):

• Tourism’s direct share of SA’s GVA: 3.2%
• Tourism’s direct share of the NT’s GVA: 4.5%
• Tourism’s direct share of WA’s GVA: 2.0%