MORE than 100 public sector workers are expected to rally outside the State Government's Community Cabinet meeting in Cairns today.

Queensland Police have confirmed they will deploy officers to Parramatta Park State School, where the meeting is due to begin at 2pm, to be on hand should protests become heated.

The Queensland Teachers’ Union has a permit for about 80 people to rally outside the school, but the figure was predicted to be higher.

They will confront the Campbell Newman-led Government about its enterprise bargaining agreement offer of a 2.7 per cent pay rise per year, which teachers say is unacceptable.

QTU president Kevin Bates is arriving in Cairns this afternoon to participate in the rally, and he has an appointment with Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek.

Queensland Fire and Rescue employees and rural firefighters are also expected at today’s rally, but it is believed they will have a bigger presence at tomorrow’s proceedings.

About four busloads of ambulance workers from Townsville are due to arrive in Cairns tomorrow to take part.

Member for Mulgrave and Shadow Treasurer, Curtis Pitt, said the LNP’s cabinet ministers should be “embarrassed showing their faces’’ in Cairns.

“So far all the LNP Government has delivered for Cairns and the Far North are cuts to jobs and services,” he said via an Opposition press release this morning.

“It is the height of rudeness for the Newman Cabinet to try and come to Cairns the weekend after the meanest Budget in a generation is delivered and try to sell their slash-and-burn policies to the people of Queensland.”

But Mr Newman has described Cairns as a “cornerstone of Queensland’s economic recovery”, noting the region would receive more than $200 million in funding this financial year for flood restoration works and $2.5 million to begin work on dredging Trinity Inlet.

Today’s rally comes after more than 800 people voiced their disgust at public service job cuts at a union event in Cairns’ CBD on Wednesday.

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