Entsch‘s dinner with the deputy

A COUPLE of women from Doomadgee had a surprise dinner with Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack at Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch’s house last night.

The duo had just returned from a trip to Papua New Guinea with Mr Entsch’s wife, Yolonde, where they distributed “moon sick” care bags to local women and taught them to make reusable and washable sanitary pads.

Mr Entsch spoke to the Cairns Post while he chopped up vegetables for a shepherd’s pie in preparation of their arrival.

“They know they’re coming here,” Mr Entsch said.

“What they don’t realise is they’re having dinner with the deputy prime minister.”

Mr McCormack took a drive from Ray Jones Drive in Woree through to Kuranda yesterday and will be shown the Cairns Western Arterial Rd and Cairns Performing Arts Centre construction site today.

Mr Entsch is campaigning to get funding to extend the National Highway to Smithfield and conduct major upgrades along the Kuranda Range.

“I’m taking the opportunity to familiarise him with what my ask is,” Mr Entsch said.

“So next week when the Cairns TNQ Convoy to Canberra goes down there, he will be right across it.”

The convoy, which involves 51 Far North Queensland business leaders visiting Parliament House over two days next week, is an exercise in preparation.

Mr Entsch said he had called in favours from other MPs whose staff he was using to help co-ordinate the visits.

“We do things like this for Advance Cairns from time to time, but this one is extraordinarily large,” he said.

Mr McCormack will deliver a keynote speech to more than 600 delegates at the Bus Industry Confederation and Bus and Coach Association New Zealand joint conference in Cairns this morning.

The Pullman Cairns International event began yesterday and winds up on Wednesday, with Queensland Transport Minister Mark Bailey and Federal Labor transport spokesman Anthony Albanese also participating tomorrow.

Cook MP Cynthia Lui used Mr McCormack’s visit to attack the Federal Government’s new GST proposal for “short-changing” Queensland.

“It’s time the LNP in Canberra actually looked after Queensland and especially the Far North, instead of sending us the deputy PM who won’t guarantee a thing,” she said.

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