Time to close the metro-regional gap on brain surgery
protests with the usual go-to venue, the Cairns Convention Centre, shut for renovations.
Member for Barron River Craig Crawford is the only one of Labor’s four Far Northern MPs on the frontbench, with emergency services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partnerships portfolios under his belt.
He said the COVID-19 crisis meant the Premier had to rethink how the visit would run.
Advance Cairns will be coordinating meetings and site visits involving ministers, political staffers and business operators across the region, including several tourism entities struggling to make ends meet.
“This is the first Community Cabinet we’ve done since COVID, so it’s a whole new world,” Mr Crawford said.
“Because of COVID, the big gatherings certainly aren’t going to happen.
“There will be a lot of smaller gatherings and stakeholder engagements, whether breakfasts, lunches or dinners with her.
“As MPs, we’ve been asked to come up with people who ordinarily wouldn’t get to interact with the Premier of the state.
“We can’t hold a town hall where we shove 400-500 people into a room to ask questions of the Premier, but we might be able to do that sort of interaction online.”
Cabinet’s closed-door meetings will be held in a regular fashion, but ministers will then be tasked with hitting the road on key fact-finding missions.
The State Government can be expected to trumpet its $7bn economic recovery plan for Queensland after it was outlined this week.
The list includes previously funded big infrastructure projects like the $164m Smithfield