A GREAT IDEA IS REFLOATED
OUR Page 1 story yesterday revealing the State Government torpedoed the city’s plan to use a retired warship as a dive site has saved the day.
The project has been refloated.
As a furore erupted yesterday over news the State Government wrote to Canberra in January pulling out of the bid for a decommissioned ship, State Tourism Minister Kate Jones told the Bulletin she had spoken to Mayor Tom Tate and they would work to secure the dollars from a new tourism infrastructure fund in the State Budget next week.
As far as Cr Tate is concerned, that means full steam ahead even if, as usual, Queensland and Canberra are not seeing eye-to-eye on what the cost will be.
But Queensland already knows the benefits of such a project, which makes the decision to try to back out early this year quite puzzling. The Government’s own figures for the wreck of HMAS Brisbane,
which was scuttled off the Sunshine Coast in 2005, show it attracts 5000 divers a year. That number could be eclipsed with a dive site here.
Many who would dive on a Gold Coast wreck would be from overseas. That would help show a healthy return on the investment – something highlighted in studies conducted by the council as it previously built cases for bidding for HMAS Brisbane
and before that, HMAS Tobruk.
After absorbing our reports yesterday and today, with twists and turns happening beneath the surface, readers will feel there are more sunken mines in this matter than were laid by the Turks in the Dardanelles in World War I.
They will wonder why Cr Tate and the council were kept in the dark, despite the city’s obvious interest in getting this project up and running and despite negotiations and lobbying continuing for six months after the State Government – or a bureaucrat – tried to pull out.
They will wonder why Fadden MP Stuart Robert was not told of Queensland’s cancellation, made in January, until a letter arrived from Defence Personnel Minister Darren Chester in late May.
They will wonder why Tourism Minister Ms Jones suddenly had an overnight epiphany and decided dive tourism did have big potential in boosting tourist numbers here.
It all seems a bit fishy but in the end, if it means the city gets its dive site, then we have a result.
The only reason this is happening though is because of the Bulletin report yesterday revealing negotiations had been sunk and the city had been misled.
There had been six months of silence, but within an hour of our report appearing there was a flurry of action.
If readers need proof of a strident local newspaper being at the heart of debate and achieving outcomes, this is it.