Live, love your local environment

I’m really pleased to see grass-roots organisations getting support to carry out much-needed environmental work in our local bushland, waterways, parks and recreational areas. The Green Army has been very popular in FNQ, with multiple projects underway in the Cairns region, Mossman and Hope Vale carrying out yellow crazy ant surveying and baiting, weed control,…

Milestones

50th Wedding Anniversary Graham & Janet Goodall, 19th June 2015 Frederick & Valerie Mellick, 3rd July 2015 Edgar & Ute Haring, 11th August 2015 Ian & Lyle Cunningham, 21st August 2015 Rodney & Beverlee Tayler, 11th September 2015   60th Wedding Anniversary Donald & Violet Rutherberg, 2nd July 2015 Leslie & Gloria Pickering, 6th August…

Aged Care in focus

Supporting the mental and physical health and wellbeing of our elderly residents is vital.  In recent months there has been a lot of discussion around the lack of aged care beds in the Cairns region in particular. It is a complex issue and one that is often misrepresented by media headlines unfortunately. Nevertheless, reducing the…

Ice scourge on our streets

Ice poses the highest risk of all illegal drugs to our community because of the violent, menacing and irrational way people behave under its influence.  At a recent community forum with the Assistant Minister for Health, Senator Fiona Nash, we heard that while ice use is not yet widespread in our region, it’s increasing at…

Out and about

Helped open the Cooktown Discovery Festival and launch of ‘48 Days- A Shared History' mural project, ably supported by my beautiful daughter Mackenzie, Cooktown Spoke at the 2015 Suicide & Self Harm Prevention Conference in recognition of the Dr Edward Koch Foundation’s 20 Years of activities, Cairns Launched the ‘Our North, Our Future’ White Paper…

NBN update

Last year, the Government identified around 1.6 million premises in Australia which had either very poor or no broadband connectivity. These premises have been – and will continue to be – prioritised in the NBN rollout. In the Far North, many regional users will get broadband via a new satellite that will offer services from…