Tourism needs a champ

FOLLOWING recent comments that espoused his self-proclaimed championship of our tourism industry, Labor’s big talking but underperforming Member for Cairns Michael Healy made me think.

If you ask many within the industry, especially those financial backers once close to him, there’s a common theme about how he has utterly failed the industry and local tourism jobs.

They will tell you Mr Healy is a great bloke to have a laugh with, however, that’s where it ends.

Mr Healy’s record is not exactly glowing with achievement. Cathay Pacific, gone. China Eastern, gone. China Southern, gone. Compounding this, Cairns has experienced the two worst Chinese New Years on record.

International visitor numbers are down and domestic visitor numbers down.

Then there’s the convention centre, more than two years behind schedule, likely cost blowouts due to a sweetheart deal with the Brisbane unions and zero plan to address the 60,000 lost visitor nights during its six-month closure.

And finally, the Cairns Global Tourism Hub, now nothing more than fish-andchip wrapping.

No doubt, over the coming months, the 2032 Olympics carrot will become a focus, with Labor promising the world and delivering very little for the local region.

Cairns needs someone to protect jobs, support business, and get things done. It’s time Cairns saw Mr Healy for what he is, a good bloke, a salesman, but in terms of delivery, a chronic underperformer.

Dennis Quick, Fishery Falls 1942: The Japanese bomb Darwin for the first time - the largest attack by a foreign power on Australia. At least 243 people are killed, 23 aircraft are destroyed and eight ships sunk.

1997: Death at 92 of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who guided the country from political chaos and economic ruin toward prosperity in the post-Mao era. 2013: Oscar Pistorius weeps in a South African court as his defence lawyer reads the athlete’s account of how he shot and killed his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, claiming he had mistaken her for an intruder.

2015: Australians brace as Cyclone Marcia threatens Queensland and northeast NSW, and Cyclone Lam intensifies off the Northern Territory. 2016: Harper Lee, author of To Kill A

Mockingbird, dies in the US aged 89. 2019: Karl Lagerfeld, (above) creative director of Chanel and Fendi, dies aged 85 in Paris.