The North Queensland economy is losing $90 million each week that domestic travel is prohibited. NQ’s tourism is worth $6.4 billion annually, supporting 37,400 direct jobs and accounting for 25% of the State’s tourism economy, despite having only 15% of the population. Unemployment in Cairns is now at 18% and climbing, and that’s even with federal government support through JobKeeper.
Cairns & The Great Barrier Reef is teaming up with other regions to urge the State Government to lift the 250km restriction on recreational travel within North Queensland and speed up the Road To Recovery.
250kms in the South-East corner (where they have had the majority of Queensland COVID-19 cases) will allow Brisbanites to travel to the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast to support their tourism operators. Applying this same distance in North Queensland doesn't even allow people from Townsville to visit Cairns, or The Whitsundays, and vice versa. We will reach as far south as Ingham. We simply don't have the same population mass as the SE corner, so it just doesn't make sense to apply the same distance restriction. Outback Queensland currently has 500kms, which would be a much more reasonable distance to apply for North Queensland.
Cairns has recorded very few cases of COVID-19 in comparison to the rest of Queensland, Australia and the world. Our businesses are ready to operate COVID-Safe.
So let’s #ReopenNQ