LNP talks with Whitsunday small business operators

The inspirational life story of one of Proserpine’s oldest family-owned businesses was shared with the Shadow Minister for Tourism, Manufacturing and Small Business Jann Stuckey on Monday afternoon.

Gray’s Timber Trusses and Frames’ co-owner Jeanette Gray treated Ms Stuckey to a pictorial-history tour of her family’s business when she pulled into the near 100-year-old mill as part of her tourism roadshow to promote the LNP’s 20-year-plan to get Queenlsand tourism back on track.

“In the Whitsundays especially, tourism and small business are intertwined. A lot of small business operators are actually tourism operators and as part of our roadshow we are finding out from the community exactly what red tape needs to be cut,” Ms Stuckey said.

Ms Gray said the lure of the mines was making it extremely difficult to find workers, across many industries.

“They had a big mining expo here and yes it was well attended but it’s so frustrating for us small business owners who are left to pick up the pieces,” Ms Gray said.

Ms Stuckey said the Labor government had put all its eggs in one mining basket and there were simply no guarantees that people were going to stay.

“The life of a miner is not for everyone,” she said.

Ms Stuckey met with tourism operators from Airlie Beach and talked about the detrimental fallout of the lagging airport upgrade.

“The last time I came here it looked like a dust bowl. Today it’s still not finished and in the past 12 months there’s hardly been an increase in flights,” she said.

Ms Stuckey said the industry had suffered under the policies of the tired, 20-year-old Labor government.

“The Whitsundays is a key tourism industry and has long been the envy of the rest of Australia. The LNP is committed to getting tourism back on track through a common sense plan that includes increasing overnight visitors' spending in Queensland to $30 billion by 2020, coordinated decision making in government and a special unit to encourage investment and infrastructure development,” she said.

LNP candidate for Whitsunday Jason Costigan said Sucrogen’s acquisition of the Proserpine Sugar Mill would no doubt put a lot of the region’s small business operators’ minds at ease.

“Like many people in the community, I am relieved this issue has been finally resolved, especially with Christmas almost upon us. Santa’s arrival had been threatened by some very dark clouds hovering over Proserpine but now we have certainty....not only for the mill but the town in general.”

Whitsunday MP Jan Jarratt said as horrible as it was for Campbell Newman to stand beside Jann Stuckey at a press conference and publicly disown her, she said she thought she was starting to understand his reasoning.

“The LNP is shamelessly selling Labor’s position as their own by adopting the visitor and expenditure targets already committed to by this Government.”

“Even worse, the LNP’s tourism “policy” uses pictures of Mexico to promote Queensland.”

“I’m not surprised Campbell Newman was outraged by this embarrassing error,” Ms Jarratt said.