Opinion
Columns, analysis and reader voices. Opinion pieces are clearly labelled and kept separate from The Daily Townsville’s news reporting.
Townsville will spend a generation paying for this. We should also spend a generation getting more back from it.
“Build it for 30,000 NRL fans on six Saturdays a year and you build a white elephant. Build it for the city the other 359 days, and it pays for itself.”
Cut the late service and you tell hospitality workers they cannot live on the island. We have done this before, and we know how it ends.
“Every time we have trimmed the last ferry, the next round of rental listings has come back ten per cent higher on the mainland.”
Visitors are already reading the bleaching reports. The industry will be stronger when it stops pretending they aren’t.
“The reef is not what it was in 1998. Visitors who travel to see it know that. Townsville’s operators should be allowed to say so.”