Host Welcome | Cairns

Transcript

Andrew Powell:Thank you very much, Claudia, and good morning. Welcome to beautiful Cairns. I'm thrilled to be here as the Minister for Environment and Tourism here in Queensland, and I congratulate you, CAPA, for holding your first Airline Leaders Summit outside of a capital city Here in Cairns. What a great choice. What a great choice. And what a great opportunity for us as a new government determined to make Queensland the number one destination for visitors in Australia. To our airline partners in the room, thank you for your vote of confidence in Queensland. Your presence is something that we really value, and it's something that we want to continue to promote and explore and look for opportunities. To have nearly 400 of the most influential aviation decision-makers in one place, that's pretty special. And to do so to talk about how we can work together to ensure Queensland's tourism industry thrives. Now, I know there will be others in the room that will want to talk about other parts of Australia, but seriously, it's all about Queensland. This is where it's all happening. And to be blunt, Cairns is at the vanguard of that momentum. So again, you made a great choice. Cairns is Australia's northern gateway, and today it's also the gateway to a new era of aviation collaboration. The region has seen remarkable growth in recent years with new tourism products, infrastructure investment, and a renewed energy that is attracting global attention. And I suspect, like me, you've noticed some of that enthusiasm and energy around the town over the last Earlier this year, we launched a visionary 20-year tourism plan, Destination 2045, after a long series of consultation sessions that ran the length and the breadth of this great state. What we heard over and over again from operators, tourism organisations, and small businesses who rely on the visitor economy was the importance of connecting Queensland. That's why we've invested an additional $75 million into a special fund And we're calling it the Connecting Queensland Fund. And just to be clear, those of you who have operated in the Queensland space before, please know that's on top of the existing contractual expenditure and any remaining monies left over from our Attracting Aviation Investment Fund. So that brings it to a minimum of $130 million that will be spent in this industry over the next 4 years. Whether it's flights that deliver tourists from overseas or interstate, or the flights and other transport that then help them access all of Queensland, what all of what Queensland has to offer, we have great opportunities to realise. As a government, we're continuing to work with airports to develop the framework for that Connecting Queensland Fund to ensure it's fit for purpose, to establish new international routes and improve flight frequency and seat capacity on key domestic connections to our regional locations. And it's our regional and rural centres that have such a unique tourism offering, whether it's First Nations rock art on the cave walls in Laura on the Cape York Peninsula, or the fossilised evidence of a dinosaur stampede in Winton in the state's west, or the crystal white sands of the Gold and Sunshine Coast beaches, or the Whitsunday. There is literally something for everyone in this state. And our opportunity is to make it as easy as possible for people to arrive and then to keep moving to visit all of these incredible landscapes and cultural offerings. And that's why we want to work with you to explore the barriers that are preventing those seamless transportation opportunities. Just while I've got the moment, another of our key priorities for Destination 2045 is ecotourism. We're aiming to deliver 45 new offerings by 2045. They'll include spectacular walking and biking trails that, to be blunt, won't just rival but will overtake the likes of New Zealand and Tasmania. Dark sky precincts where stargazing is unmatched. First Nations cultural tourism from our rainforests to our rugged outback. And skyways so that you can see these spectacular landscapes like never before. All of those require people to get out and about. To trade screen time for green time. And we know people want to travel with a light footprint. So how do we work together to deliver that and ensure that the prosperity that flows from a successful visitor economy can be shared around Queensland and with the businesses involved in that visitor economy? As one of those businesses, aviation has been confronted with many challenges— global instability, a pandemic, rising costs. So how can we work together to help each other? Because our shared future here in Queensland is incredibly bright. I look forward to hearing from you and wish you all well as you discuss these challenges and the solutions, not to mention the opportunities, to ensure your industry grows and thrives and delivers great outcomes for Tropical North Queensland Good morning and welcome to Cairns and our idyllic winter weather.

Richard Barker:We had a cold snap last week when it was an overnight low of 15 degrees and the locals broke out their puffer jackets. So hopefully you get to enjoy not only great connections and reacquaintances and do some good business here, but you get to experience this beautiful city that we are fortunate to call home. Really wanted to take the opportunity to acknowledge and thank our valued partners who have made this event possible. Claudia, Marco, and the team at CAPA, who took a leap of faith and put confidence in our team that we could pull this off, what I think is going to be a really exciting couple of days. Tourism and Events Queensland, who are our key partners, and certainly last night's welcome event which had a really positive vibe, epitomised the brand platform of Tourism Events Queensland of that holiday feeling. The vibe that there was at, for those who were at the welcome event, was really positive and upbeat. We actually had to get security to usher some of you out. I'm sure they'd still be there if they weren't given a bit of a nudge. I'm not sure whether those people have actually made it to the start this morning actually. But Tourism Events Queensland, we can't do anything in this town without the fabulous support of Mark Olsen and the team at Tourism Tropical North Queensland, which really do a magnificent job promoting to the world the 2 World Heritage Areas we have here, the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest. Cairns Convention Centre, with this magnificent venue which was only completed a couple of years ago, Janet and Wayne and the team do a remarkable job putting us on a world stage and attracting international business events here. Recently had a delegation of 1,000 anaesthetists from all around the world. Events like that are really driving business events and tourism in the city, so I really want to thank our partners for what I think is going to be a fabulous couple of days. There was a video that played a little bit earlier that sort of highlights some of the things that have been going on in this region in the last few years. For those of you who missed it, I'll just point out a couple of things for people who aren't that familiar with Cairns. We're obviously gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, which is a truly iconic world-renowned destination. 10% of all international visitors to Australia come to Cairns, in many cases to go to the Reef. So we're ideally positioned to be a gateway into Northern Australia. We already fly to 9 international destinations, but the real game changer for us is the development of new aircraft technologies and specifically long-range narrow-body aircraft. So with a Yeah. XLR aircraft, for example, you can reach deep into Asia, Korea, Japan, China from Cairns with a long-range narrowbody that would previously have required a widebody. So it opens up a whole range of opportunities for us to reach markets that were previously not viable with a widebody, but the economics fundamentally stack up with a narrowbody. So it opens up all sorts of interesting opportunities and a strategic point of advantage we have given our northern location, is you can reach those countries, Korea, Japan, etc., from Cairns, but you can't reach them from the southern cities. So we're working closely with our partners, and for any of the airlines in Asia who are here, it's a great entry point because so many of our international visitors, as I pointed out, will feature Cairns as part of their itinerary. So if there's opportunities for people to enter and start their vacation visit Australia in paradise here in Cairns or have it as their last destination. We think there's a real opportunity because we have fantastic domestic connections with our partners in the Qantas Group and Virgin. You can reach every significant place in Australia with a direct air connection here, so we think there's a real opportunity for us to become what we're referring to as the Northern Gateway. It's a really exciting time. We've got a busy agenda. You really want to hear from the other speakers, not myself. So really want to encourage you to make new contacts, reconnect with old friends and colleagues, share your insights on how we can move this industry forward, because I think it's a really exciting time. Last year we achieved our highest international visitors through our terminals since 2007, but we really think we're poised for an exciting area of growth. Leveraging off the great work led by Tourism and Events Queensland and their 2045 strategy. All of the things that feature in that strategy we have here in Cairns, so we think we're ideally poised alongside Brisbane and the Olympics to play a really key role as to have Queensland as your entry point to Australia when you start your journeys around this fabulous country. So have a great couple of days. Thank you and enjoy.

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