Runner knows nothing!

[continuation from above]

Lastly, another very important point that needs to be made is that in your original post you are specifically referring to LOCAL TOURISM. There is no-way I would consider Melbourne to Cairns in this category, rather I would say it is interstate domestic tourism. For me local tourism would be something that you can drive to comfortably/leisurely within a day. For example, say you lived in Brisbane then local tourism would be South-East Queensland and a bit of Northern NSW (say down to Byron Bay)- but even this is really pushing the limits of what I would call "local".

What you're effectively asking for is that someone like me who lives in SE-Qld pay through my tax for the holidays of someone living 1000s of km away interstate in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, etc. Why would this ever by a good idea from my perspective? If anything if I was only interested in the my local economy and wanted people to holiday locally then logically I would want he opposite of what you propose- ie: that fuel for non-commercial use is taxed higher so that it forces people to stay in my local region when they go on holidays and also implement a whooping great big tax on overseas travel. (BY-THE-WAY: I don't support either of these taxes, I'm just saying that if my goal was to achieve your desired outcome of local tourism then this is would be a step in that direction.)

Oh are people still holidaying at the Great Barrier reef? I was taught at school in the 1970's that it would be finished by now!

JF any thinking person does know that the regressives have stuffed this nation. The only real solution is to drain the swamp and with so many dumbed so these days its unlikely. I hope desperately for my grandkids sake that I am wrong.

thinkabit more.

Each seat for a family on an airplane costs money, too much generally. Prohibitive. No holiday stay at home.

Going by road is part of the holiday, a great holiday, and provides business and employment for communities along the way.

JF Aus: Do you have any idea how cheap airlines are?

I just had a look, I can get a Melbourne-Cairns return flight this week and it cost less than $500. In other words you can fly a family of four for less than two grand! Two grand is amazingly cheap considering that you will be there the same day!

To show you just how cheap that is let's work through an example scenario:
Let's say you're a Melbournian on a very low adult age of $20 a week after tax and you want to fly your family on your yearly holiday to Cairns. So you need to save: $2000/52 per week which is about $40/wk. In other words, all you have to is less than 2hrs of works per week or equivalently, less than 24 mins a day (assuming you're working a 5 day week).
So do people have 24 mins a day spare to pay for their family's trip? Well consider this: 24 mins is less than what many people spend reading and posting comments on internet forums like this or on twitter a day. It is less than most people spend watching TV a day (indeed, the time spent just on the TV ads alone per day is more than this for many people). It is way less than what many people spend mucking around on their phone. ...etc...

If you don't think that $500 for a return flight from Melbourne to Cairns is exceptional value, then I SUGGEST YOU WALK IT and see how much time and money it costs you. Remember, it is only over a mere 200 years ago that that was the only available of mode of travel in Australia. In general, travel costs over the last hundred years (especially the last few decades) have decreased astoundingly. And with future technology it will most likely continue to decrease in cost and decrease in transit time (technology such as extreme speed trains such as hyperloop).

I got a cheap fare with Tiger about 3 weeks ago and it was a good service - Brisbane to Sydney for $55, it cost me about the same in fuel, tolls and fares to get to Brisbane airport from the suburbs before my flight, and to where I was going using Sydney Trains when my flight arrived.