LEADING tourist businesses have called a halt on hiring new staff to cope with an expected plunge in tourist traffic from Japan.

As the shock of Qantas’ devastating decision to dump flights between Japan and Cairns from December sinks in, business leaders also started to ask where the Federal Government was.

"The Government gets a lot out of this area in tax," Charles Woodward, one of the Far Northern tourism industry’s biggest employers, said.

"If this was a Mitsubishi plant in Victoria looking like shutting down they’d be acting very fast.

"But they don’t seem to be doing much or saying much to help us at all."

The Cairns Post tried to talk to Federal Member for Leichhardt Jim Turnour yesterday about the Government’s response to the crisis but the MP declined through his media officer, saying he had said everything he wanted to say to a reporter on Sunday.

The officer said the MP’s first priority was to meet industry players this week.

Asked what was Mr Turnour’s response to calls by industry and Cairns MP Desley Boyle for a federal cash bail-out to match the state’s $4 million, the officer said that was just one option and all were yet to be considered.

"We need to stop and take stock of where we’re at," she said.

Amid hints from Virgin Blue yesterday that it too may soon cut flights to destinations such as the Gold Coast and impose a new luggage tax, a high-level meeting about how to work through the airline crisis will be held between the State Government and tourism leaders in Brisbane today. The Cairns Aviation Strategy Group is also meeting today and Tourism Australia managing director Geoff Buckley will be in Cairns tomorrow for talks with tourism industry leaders.

Mr Woodward, who as managing director of the CaPTA Group employs more than 330 people at a string of tourist parks, bus tours and river-rafting tours, said job cuts were "a given" as the company expected to lose two thirds of its Japanese market.

The immediate strategy was to stop replacing staff and not hire more even though they were coming into the peak season, he said.

Quicksilver Group managing director Tony Baker said his company had also imposed a staff freeze and would not be filling vacancies in his 500-strong workforce.

"Normally around this time we’d be staffing up, adding 15-20 new positions," Mr Baker said.

He said he was still "quietly hopeful" replacement air services could be found between now and December.

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