Are you a local business owner? – scroll down to sign and stand with other local business in your region.
Open Letter from local businesses regarding Cairns dredging and the Ports Bill.
Healthy reef and marine environment = healthy businesses
Do you own, run or work in a Cairns and Far North local business? Do you care about reef protection and our tourism future?
Please stand up to the misleading and damaging lobby group calling for more dredging and inappropriate industrial ‘priority port’ listing for Cairns port. You can sign up to the open letter on the form below and/or download the letter here: Business open letter FINAL web
Over 100 businesses have already signed the the letter which was printed in a full page ad in the Cairns Post on Friday 23rd October. Download the letter and the list of signatories as a pdf here: Business letter with signatories final
Read more:
- No mega-port for Cairns e-petition – sign now!
- Reef report card confirms need to restrict dredging
- Letter from Federal Environment Minister Hunt backs Queensland Government stance on Cairns Port Dredging.
- Other ways to take action: CAFNEC Ports Bill landing page
Please join other local businesses by signing on to the open letter using the form below.
… Want to discuss this further before signing up? No worries, give us a call on 4032 1586
Sign on to the open letter:
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Open Letter Text:
We, the undersigned business owners, managers and workers of Queensland, are deeply concerned about the future health of the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is one of the natural wonders of the world. And it’s an economic driver for our region.
We love our marine environment, and we value the Reef, and the $6 billion dollar tourism industry and 60,000 jobs it supports. Tourism is a sustainable business that supports the local communities, not a select few.
We oppose the changes to list the Port of Cairns and allow more dredging. Making Cairns an industrial mega port would allow unlimited capital dredging. Cairns risks becoming an industrial port like Gladstone. No one comes from around the world to see dredging.
Australia and Queensland made a commitment to the World Heritage Committee to limit port expansion and dredging alongside the Great Barrier Reef. We must honour that promise and prevent an ‘at risk’ listing for the GBR.
More dredging will hurt tourism. There are real and viable alternatives to dredging for cruise ships. New dredging is not needed for a viable and functioning port.
If we protect it, the Reef will continue to provide for us. We take our responsibility to protect the Reef seriously and we call on all our political leaders to do the same.
That means:
• Not amending the Sustainable Ports Development Bill 2015 to include the port of Cairns or Mourilyan as industrial ‘priority ports’, or making any other amendment which would increase the amount of dredging and inappropriate development from what is already allowed under the Bill.
• Renewing the commitment to not spend up to or over $400 million of taxpayers money on new dredging in Cairns under the current EIS process and instead committing to supporting Cairns and FNQ businesses in ways that do not put the environment at risk.
Please, protect the Great Barrier Reef and our coastal environments; it is in all our interests.
