World beaters

“TOWNSVILLE tourism talk of the town”, article ( TB, Jan 3) never even hinted as to what can be achieved in our city with regards to tourism.

Kelsie Iorio tried to convey our situation and the answer from Townsville Enterprise’s Bridget Woods was a joke.

I recently walked into the information booth in the town centre, and was horrified at the lack of local tourist destinations, especially since most of the pamphlets indicated the Whitsundays as the place to go.

Our three local Labor public employees have done nothing to actually implement strategies to forward our northern city as a wonderful destination.

They cannot bother with this, because it is too hard to find enterprises that will lure thousands of tourists to our area.

Yet we could develop a Sovereign Hill type town in Charters Towers, but with our own twist. This historical tourist activity would be unique to our area. We have the reef just off the shore, massive cattle stations that offer a world- beating experience for our heritage beef industry.

We have potential to grow coconuts to have a totally Townsville coconut oil, flour, milk, sugar, chips, not to mention our sugarcane industry.

Yet nothing new is happening, nothing Australian, nothing Townsville and nothing is what we seem to be settling for, because it is easy to do nothing when you follow a party line.

Regulation, green taxes, taxes, government compliance, union demands, taxes and more taxes are stopping anyone from doing anything with tourists.

I know one operator who wanted to build a massive ropes and adventure course here, yet Labor regulation and the Townsville First council stopped this with such massive compliance costs that he went to New Zealand to do this.

What dribble about making our city the talk of the town?

We have to actually do something, make business able to create enterprises that will make tax dollars, not just promoting the Whitsunday Passage as the place to be.

The three stooges are just playing, not really working and our senator is just absent.

Hundreds of thousands of tourists would give anything to come here to do something Australian, buy something Australian. Yet most of the trinkets and souvenirs are made in China … yeah good one. DEBRA GIBSON,

Pinnacles.