On Monday, the State Government made the surprise announcement it was selling Cairns Airport to fund a $540 million revamp of Cairns Base Hospital and to buy land on the city's southside to build a new hospital in the long term, writes Member for Cairns, Desley Boyle.

This week the Bligh State Government has made three very big and far-reaching decisions for the future of Cairns – the sale of the airport, the funding for a major new ward block on the Esplanade site and the search to find a site for a new hospital in the future.

The Health Services Plan released recently showed the pressure the hospital is under and highlighted the need to act now to keep pace with service demands while also planning for the longer-term future.

What will happen now is that planning for a new major building – Block D – will start straight away.

The parking station on the present hospital site (the ugliest building in Cairns, in my opinion) will have to be knocked down and parking will be relocated to the other side of Lake St.

This will give us room to build on the existing site. In the meantime the full expansion of the Emergency Department can proceed and will be completed in 2009.

The search for a new site for a Health Precinct south of the city has already begun. In the first instance this will house community health facilities.

Apart from being the site for the new hospital, it also is an opportunity to co-locate associated health facilities and maybe even a campus for the JCU Medical School and nursing and other health professional training.

How much will all this cost? Enormous amounts of money!

The present estimate just for the new ward block and work on the present site is nearly $500 million dollars. And we need money for the new site and to get health services going there.

That’s the number one reason I support the decision to sell the Cairns International Airport.

The money raised by the sale will not go into consolidated revenue – it will stay in Cairns.

What is not spent in the next few years will be clearly allocated in the Future Fund to Cairns and our region.

There are some who criticised linking the sale of the airport with the funding of the hospital and health services. I absolutely disagree. On the contrary I insisted that this connection was made very clear!

Nonetheless selling the airport was still a hard decision, at least for me. Through the 20 years of my involvement in public life I had been a strong supporter of public ownership.

I had even been lucky enough to serve a stint as a board member of the Cairns Port Authority in the early ’90s.

Aside from getting the money for the hospital, however, there was another reason I changed my mind about this.

As the Minister for Tourism and Regional Development I had seen up close the substantial benefits that have come from the privatisation of Brisbane, Gold Coast and Townsville airports. I want those benefits for Cairns too.

And I agree with the Premier’s very to-the-point statement that core business for the State Government is delivering hospital and health services; core business is not running airports.

One of the concerns that has been raised is what will happen to the funding that has been provided by the CPA for tourism promotion and marketing to TTNQ each year.

I have spoken to Rob Giason and others about this and also to the Treasurer. It is important not only that the money is assured but also that uncertainty for the tourism industry is minimised. More news on this soon.

It would be true to say that it is the people of Cairns who made this happen.

Whether through The Cairns Post campaign, through COUCH fundraising activities, through phone calls and discussions with me and the other local members, you made it clear that you would not settle for second best when it came to the hospital.

You sent the message loud and clear and we listened.

I am very proud of the passion shown by the people of Cairns.

Cairns is one of the most special places in the world to live – people are migrating here in record numbers and who can blame them?

I am confident that the privatisation of the airport will boost tourism and bring new money to the region and that business and industry will flourish.

And I am so happy now that I know the people of Cairns and the region will have the hospital and health services they need and deserve.

This is most certainly a week that I will always remember.

Desley Boyle MP, Member for Cairns
Minister for Tourism, Regional Development and Industry

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