Kevin's view

On Monday June 1, 2015 John McKenzie from 846 interviewed the former Mayor of Cairns Kevin Byrnes on various things and one that surprised me was when he described Aquis as being a lemon.
As reported in previous articles I have said that Aquis was fading into the sunset more recently commenting on Tony Fung spending up "BIG" on the Gold Coast.
http://www.cairnsvideonews.com/2015/05/has-tony-fung-at-last-found-his-niche.html
What people have to remember is that Cairns is a tourist city not an industrial city and that's what the people rely on and it's something that the residents have to accept.
Cairns will probably never be anywhere near an industrial city due to the distance from the major cities and one of the biggest problems that exists is that interstate people move to Cairns without first checking on the availability of employment and housing.
Unfortunately when they do arrive they find that work is very scarce and the biggest employers are the tourist resorts who in turn employ cheap labour such as backpackers.
The government needs to seriously consider dredging the inlet to allow larger ships to dock and in doing so will flourish from the money spent by the passengers, sometimes 2500 on one ship.
Long haul aircrafts carry between 160 to 250 passengers coming into Cairns and the decline in overseas airlines has dropped dramatically over the years.
The international arrivals according to one operator is significantly down with Jetstar cancelling flights to Japan and vice versa  if the aircraft isn't over half capacity and one can't blame them as it isn't viable to any operator.
Listen to what Kevin Byrne had to say: