Newsroom

January 27, 2022

KENNEDY MP, Bob Katter, says the Queensland Transport Minister needs to get a map out when talking about the Bridle Track Tunnel, as the route is already a gazetted road and half of it goes through state forest or timber reserves.

Mr Katter made the comments in response to Minister Bailey who told the Cairns Post that “whacking a dirty big highway through the middle of it (national park) would be ‘Joh-style’ environmental vandalism at its worst.”[1]

“It would be nice if the Minister had some public servants that told him the truth and gave him a dose of reality, because if he had any brains at all he would know what he has said is outrageous,” Mr Katter said.

“The track is already there. It is a gazetted track now, and half of it goes through state forest or timber reserves.

“He doesn’t have much credibility anyway when it’s taken him two years to work out whether the Barron River bridge is safe or unsafe and he still has no idea.”

Mr Katter said it was laughable for the Minister to claim the environmental upper hand when his State Government was approving and planning ‘bird-killing’ windfarms along the Great Dividing Range beside world heritage listed national parks.

“At the same time his State Government is saying you can’t build the Bridle Track Tunnel, they’re building 250 kilometres of unsealed roads and wind turbines on top of the Great Dividing Range to provide the most expensive electritcity on earth, which will be intermittent,” Mr
Katter said.

“In relation to the Bridle Track Tunnel we’re only talking about 16 kilometres of road mostly through scrub and forest country.

“That just indicates this Brisbane Government’s mentality. They are happy for us to be landlocked in the Far North and for us to have the world’s most expensive power.

“The billion-dollar tourism industry at Kuranda has been ground to a halt. The people of the greater Cairns area are on desolation road.
Cairns was built on international tourism, by people with foresight. Now there aren’t any international tourists. The other huge attribute for
Cairns was the American, Japanese and European backpackers and they have disappeared as well.

“The State Government have completely decimated our industries. We’ve lost 10,000 jobs in tourism and probably 10,000 indirect jobs,[1] but we can all go to bed and sleep well at night knowing we’ll probably have 30 or 40 ongoing jobs from the windfarms. We won’t be able to turn the lights on when the winds not blowing.

“We need new industries and that’s what the Bridle Track Tunnel will provide by opening up heavy vehicle access to ports, which will trigger agricultural and mining growth in the Cape, Gulf and Tablelands.”

[1] https://www.cairnspost.com.au/news/cairns/barron-river-bridge-to-be-cut-to-one-lane-as-debate-rages/news-story/9b7c751edf891afb743d3e0168235f71
2 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-24/9000-tourism-jobs-lost-in-cairns-since-pandemic-began/100777894