Time to make trades sexy
THE concept plans by the owners of The Ville Resort- Casino are quite an eye opener.
If you haven’t seen them, you should check them out.
You can find them on our website or on Facebook.
They plan a hotel tower and luxury villas surrounded by large swimming lagoons on land next to the casino with a marina for superyachts on the seafront in what is commonly called the duck pond.
I think the concept looks good and deserves support although, like some others who have commented online, I question what protections there will be for children who can’t swim.
I imagine the highly- paid planners have an answer for this.
There have been scores of these lagoons built in resorts around the world and from the accounts I have read, they have been very successful.
If this is developed here – and the owner tells me he is keen – this could be very good for Townsville too.
The city and region has always lacked the infrastructure needed to support tourism.
If these kind of projects can be built, they will create demand for more international and domestic flights into and out of the city, which for too long we have been denied.
The land next to the casino and the duck pond have been identified for development for years.
More recently, the late planner Trevor Reddacliff envisaged the area being developed for tourism and recreation including just the kind of uses being proposed, of a hotel and marina.
Then the property boom came and developers moved in, supported by the Labor government and council of the time – to their shame – with plans for a residential canal estate over the duck pond and a 450- unit project on the 3ha site.
Thankfully, the financial crisis intervened, although not soon enough to prevent the existing gated residential estate on the Breakwater Marina.
Like Reddacliff, I think it is important to develop these seafront assets for tourism and recreation, for short- term accommodation and not private use.
This will help build Townsville’s lifestyle assets, which have been tarnished of late. THERE are just over a quarter of a million apprentices in Australia.
That’s down on last year and way down on a few years ago. We can’t sit by and let this happen.
With almost 25 million people and all sides of politics committed to a bigger Australia, we need people qualified to actually build it.
For a generation we have put too much emphasis on school kids going to uni. But we’ve now hit the point where too many students go there.
Our universities are flooded with students not because they are smart enough to do the courses, but because the institutions keep lowering the bar until they fill the class.
Institutions don’t care if the students qualify or if there are jobs at the end of the rainbow; they want full classes because the taxpayer pays for their courses upfront and the student pays it off, eventually.
So the unis have no incentive to change the current system.
Meanwhile, regional towns and cities need to bring people in from overseas to fill the jobs they can’t get locals to do.
The challenge isn’t just for government, it’s for industry too.
Where are the ads showing kids playing with building blocks and the adults who go on to build houses and towers as a job?
Where are the campaigns to celebrate the people who didn’t go to university but have made buckets more money with their hands than thousands of people with an arts degree will ever make?
Put simply, we need to make trades sexy again.
If we don’t, then the current cost of getting someone to build something for you will just go ever further through the roof and we will need to keep going overseas to fill the jobs Australian kids should be proud to be doing. LAST week I wrote here about the clear case for Sam Dastyari to leave the parliament.
A week on my view hasn’t changed and a little moment most missed on Thursday gives me hope it might happen sooner than we think.
As the lower house was passing Same- Sex Marriage, the Attorney- General told the Senate he would send Dastyari off to an investigation when parliament returned next year.
This week we learned Dastyari asked some 115 questions to security officials that were very pro- China.
They followed the similar line he gave when he went against national security police during the election campaign.
Dastyari has to go, because he can keep asking his questions from the backbench during Senate estimates where senators get to ask ministers and public servants anything they want.
The Dastyari story isn’t over. Some of the most dogged reporters at News and Fairfax are chasing this; the government won’t give up; and with parliament not sitting there’s nowhere to hide when the next big story breaks.
Every day Bill Shorten fails to boot him out of the Labor Party, he too is tainted by this scandal.
So will he move or will Dastyari finally put party and country first and leave before parliament returns?
Joining Paul on the program this Monday are Graham Richardson, Ross Cameron and Janine Perrett.