Last Wednesday I proudly presented uniforms to the Cairns Regional Hockey Academy Singapore Development Tour squad for 2017. These girls have been preparing and training hard for eight weeks, so it was wonderful to recognise their efforts in front of their friends and families. Today they are flying to Singapore where they will play two…
On Tuesday next week, in the small community of Mareeba, west of Cairns, there will be a huge outpouring of community loss and grief at the funeral of Noeline Ikin, a very special woman who has fought for regional Australia to the very end. Noeline typified the values that regional communities hold dear: honesty, integrity,…
I stand here today as the co-chair of the Australian Tuberculosis Caucus, and I wish to acknowledge my other co-chair, the Hon. Matt Thistlethwaite. We are very capably, between the two of us, representing this issue here in this country. I also acknowledge my colleague and very good friend the Rt Hon. Nick Herbert, the…
I also rise to speak on the Parliamentary Entitlements Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 today. I was keen to do so primarily because my views on the scrapping of the gold pass have certainly been grossly misrepresented by various media outlets that have not even bothered to check the facts or pick up a phone and…
I was certainly taken aback today in reading in today's media of the salary package of Australia Post's CEO Ahmed Fahour. Earning $5.6 million in 2016, he was Australia's highest paid public servant. Five other executives in Australia Post received salaries ranging from $1.3 million to $1.8 million. This is not the first time there…
In recent weeks we have seen, again, the tragedy of domestic and family violence in the headlines. The murder of Gold Coast mother Teresa Bradford by her estranged husband, while he was out on bail on domestic violence charges, beggars belief. It has renewed calls for victims of domestic violence to be told if the…
Last Friday, the NBN network was switched on for more than 4,100 premises in Leichhardt, including 900 fibre-to-the node premises in Cooktown town centre; 340 fixed wireless premises around Kuranda and Kowrowa, with construction of the fibre to the node in Kuranda currently underway; and 2,900 fibre-to-the-node premises in the northern beaches of Cairns. This…
I rise this evening to congratulate Tourism Tropical North Queensland, which is in the final negotiations on a deal for direct flights to a new Chinese destination-and this is fabulous news for us. I thank TTNQ, tourism partners and Cairns Airport for continuing to push the envelope and focus on sustainable tourism growth, particularly in…
In September I attended an event to celebrate the arrival of Nautilus Aviation's Bell 412EP multipurpose helicopter, a magnificent piece of equipment that is solely for emergency purposes in Far North Queensland. The $7 million aircraft is kitted out with everything needed for emergency services, flood and cyclone relief and search and rescue. Nautilus worked…
I rise to express my profound sadness and shock at the loss of a wonderful Australian, a man of faith who has made an outstanding contribution to our country and to our community. The imam of Cairns mosque, Abdul Aziz Mohammed, passed away last night after a long illness, surrounded by family. He was 84…