Half-price flights announced to boost domestic Australian tourism

Australians will be offered 800,000 half-price airfares to regional tourism destinations under the government's plan to save the tourism and aviation sectors.

Prime Minister (PM) Scott Morrison on Thursday unveiled the 1.2 billion Australian dollars (927.8 million US dollars) tourism and aviation rescue package to prop-up the industries after the end of the JobKeeper wage subsidy program at the end of March.

The half-price ticket program will initially operate in 13 regions that rely heavily on international tourism and have a high dependence on JobKeeper.

Regions included in the scheme are the Gold Coast in Queensland, Launceston in Tasmania, Kangaroo Island in South Australia and so on.

Morrison said that the scheme would support businesses hit hard by the pandemic.

"This is our ticket to recovery - 800,000 half-price airfares to get Australians travelling and supporting tourism operators, businesses, travel agents and airlines who continue to do it tough through Covid-19, while our international borders remain closed," he said in a statement.

The discounts will be off the average fare and will be available on airline websites from April 1.

In addition to government-subsidized airfares, the package also includes funding for 10-year loans worth up to five million Australian dollars for small and medium businesses still relying on JobKeeper to survive.

And new international aviation support in the package aims to help Australia's international passenger airlines maintain more than 8,000 core international aviation jobs.

"We're also backing the workforces of our international airlines and the teams and infrastructure they need so that when tourism takes off again and our borders reopen, our airlines are ready to go," said Deputy PM and Infrastructure and Transport Minister Michael McCormack.