2032 VISION: Civic leaders outline what Cairns and the Far North will look like in time for the Olympics
It’s 2032 and Cairns, from its humble origins as a frontier gold rush town established 156 years earlier, is home to almost 250,000 inhabitants drawn from all corners of the world.
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IT’S 2032 and Cairns, from its humble origins as a frontier gold rush town established 156 years earlier, is home to almost 250,000 inhabitants drawn from all corners of the world.
The selection of Brisbane to host the 2032 Olympic Games has turned the nation’s focus to the future.
And Cairns’ civic leaders have outlined their visions for what Australia’s “most global regional city” could look like in 11 years time as we begin welcoming athletes for the Brisbane Olympics.
One thing that stands out in the mind of Advance Cairns executive chairman Nick Trompf alongside population growth – “You would think by 2032 Cairns would be pushing towards a quarter of a million population”, he said – is the city’s roads.
With more than a billion dollars committed by State and Federal governments for road upgrades, traffic woes will hopefully be a thing of the past by 2032.
But Mr Trompf said it would require the “missing piece in the middle”, that is, “how we link up the (Western Arterial Road) with the (Southern Access Corridor)”.
Aside from a more efficient road network, Mr Trompf sees a number of major projects completed by the time 2032 rolls around.
The Cairns University Hospital will be up and running, teaching doctors from first to final years, and “leading the world in tropical medical research”, he said.
The navy base will have been substantially expanded, cementing the city’s position as a defence city, and the marine maintenance precinct will have doubled in size from the 4500 people it currently employs, working towards returning Cairns to its status as a prominent ship building city as it was back in the 70s.
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Vibrant economic precincts will have sprung up around the university hospital and the port.
Then there’s that all-important ingredient – water.
Mr Trompf said that by the time 2032 rolled around, he hoped the State Government will have had the courage to support agricultural growth by backing further investment in water security and water storage for agricultural production.
“We’ll also need to have a significant extra supply to Cairns by then due to the population growth. The council at the moment has a major project on the south side to provide that extra (water) security. I’d like to think that will be funded and built by then as well,” he said.
Partly driving that population growth will be Cairns’ firmly re-establishing its position as “Australia’s most global regional city”, Mr Trompf said.
The Cairns Airport, he said, is the single most important piece of infrastructure in the city.
By 2032 he hopes the international and domestic terminals will be extensively expanded and modernised, and Cairns will be accessing more international destinations than it has ever done before.
“The tyranny of distance – that’s what held Cairns back for a long, long time, and it’s the airport that really overcame that in the first sense,” he said.
“And then the internet and the dramatic advances in smart phone technology has been the next breakthrough.
“I think there will be many Australians who discover the beauty of living in this part of the world and decide there’s more to life than high rise towers in inner-city Melbourne or Sydney.”
When Cairns Regional Council Mayor Bob Manning looks to 2032, he sees a city that is confident, attractive (“as it deserves to be”) and which has settled back into a regime of consistent economic growth, built across an even broader base than what we have now.
“Although I think our base is strong, I would expect to see the Department of Defence and in particular the navy playing a much bigger part in our economic growth,” Cr Manning said.
Think back on what Cairns was like 10 years ago, Cr Manning said, and that’s the type of growth we can expect between now and 2032.
“I think we’ll see a city that truly will be much more confident in how it projects itself to the world, I’d like to think by then we’d be a recognised world leader in green economies … and I’d love to think we’d have a generation of young leaders, young people who are going into their teens (now) … they’ll become influencers of the future,” he said.
Cairns’ strong multicultural growth would continue, and Cr Manning said tourism in Cape York would be also be growing strongly.
Dreaming big, Cr Manning said the council’s water security project would be completed by 2032, we’d have another national sports team to complement the Cairns Taipans, and there would be increased activity between Cairns and Papua New Guinea.
“I think we’re made for each other in lots of ways – particularly tourism,” he said.
And he said he would like to think Cairns would be more recognised in terms of its Great Barrier Reef management and leadership.
To cap it all off, there’s also potential for Cairns to go “back to the future”, Mr Trompf said.
As it sits, production from the resources sector is currently worth $1 billion a year to the Far North economy, and there’s plenty of room to grow over the next decade.
“The resources that exist in our hinterland around us are much underrated … and there’s a lot of exploratory work going on,” he said.
“It’s back to the future in a sense – Cairns began as a mining town and agriculture and fishing were big too, and while fishing plays a lesser role these days, agriculture and mining are an essential part of our future.”
Originally published as 2032 VISION: Civic leaders outline what Cairns and the Far North will look like in time for the Olympics
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