A report by the ABC says that Tourism Australia says it does not know how much it will spend to fulfil federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey’s idea of having a Japanese television soap opera filmed in Australia, which she announced at ATE 2007 yesterday.
With tourism numbers from Japan in a serious nose dive and Tourism Australia working hard to recover them, CEO Geoff Buckley told a Senate Committee that the soap opera was Ms Bailey’s idea and it is now being explored further.
Labour Senator Kerry O’Brien quizzed Mr Buckley on the proposal during a Senate hearing yesterday with Mr Buckley saying, “We have some proposals coming in from producers and others with ideas and then the next step would be to actually go into Japan to negotiate with the TV stations.”
Report by The Mole on location at ATE 2007
