Give port ability to adapt

TAKING away valuable farming land to develop into an industrial park should not happen.

Cane farming should be diversified. If anything, an ethanol plant would be best built next to the mill, so the cane industry becomes less dependent on government handouts and better protected from volatile sugar prices, while at the same time supplying clean fuel and energy.

The industrial park should be built at East Trinity where hundreds of hectares of land, previously destroyed beyond regeneration, is reclaimed using the dredging spoil rather than paying someone to remove it.

Build a bridge across the inlet, that also services Admiralty Island, the navy and port development, will have three other benefits:

1. A second southern access to Cairns so we don’t see a repeat of the ‘bomb scare’ traffic chaos we had not long ago.

2. For those living at East Trinity and Yarrabah their travel times to Cairns reduced by 45 minutes and ensure access even during the wet season.

3. Design the bridge so larger ships can still navigate the eastern side of the inlet and integrate a footpath and cycle way with a viewing platform at the high point giving a new spectacular view of Cairns for locals and tourists alike to enjoy.

Having worked many years in logistics the biggest flaw in this southern industrial fantasy is the separation of ports and industry with unnecessary kilometres of road and rail.

Instead move industry to East Trinity, leaving Cairns to expand its tourism while both still having direct access to our port facilities which must become a strategic port if Cairns is to survive.

Give Cairns region and our port the ability to adapt, not the current tangled mess of industry on-top of tourism, already bulging arterial highways and families next to factories. Attila Feher-Holan, independent candidate for Mulgrave 1994: Twelve killed in Queensland’s worst bus crash, on Brisbane’s Gateway Arterial Road (above). 2006: The world’s largest solar power plant in Victoria and a plan to reduce carbon emissions from coal are two projects for which the Australian government pledges funding, to combat global warming. 2014: Australian Labour Opposition leader Bill Shorten tells the Christian lobby he supports same-sex marriage. 2016: Two men and two women die after a float flips on the Thunder River Rapids ride at Dreamworld, forcing the closure of the popular Queensland theme park.