Why Tourism Australia job ad offering 'free lunch' has sparked outrage

Tourism Australia has removed an ad offering to pay people with lunch.

The ad, which was shared by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance on Twitter, was looking for two people to join a photo and video shoot around Canberra for 10 hours of work over two days.

“There is such thing as a free lunch,” the ad reads.

“One male, one female on each day. Talent must be active, happy to do a lot of walking (wear good shoes!), able to ride a bike and confident in front of a camera.”

It asks for the pair to be available between 10am and 3pm on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

“While this is an unpaid activity, lunch will be provided each day and all activities are free of charge,” it reads.

The MEAA added it was posted in a youth hostel and was not an internal job.

While Tourism Australia offered a free meal some were not biting.

“Does 10 hours of work for a free lunch sound like a fair deal?” the MEAA tweeted.

One woman tweeted it’s “definitely not on”.

“That’s absolutely unfair and un-Australian,” one man tweeted.

A Tourism Australia spokesperson told Yahoo News the poster should not have been created as it “did not reflect its normal practices around the use of talent”.

“This is only something we became aware of on Tuesday night. We immediately asked for the poster to be removed,” the spokesperson said.

“The request is certainly not in line with our normal social media team practice and was a one-off mistake. It has been our long-held practice that talent involved in shoots are paid for their work.”

The spokesperson added no applications had been received.

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