• Cairns region, including the Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropics Rainforests, QLD.
• Kakadu National Park, including Darwin as the major gateway community, NT.
• The Victorian Alps and ski-fields, VIC.
• The Barossa region, SA.
• The Blue Mountains, NSW.

The project was due for completion in December 2008 and the publication has been catalogued by the National Library but not yet published. The CRC will report next month and there will be a national Tourism Futures conference on the Gold Coast in August, 2009.

Meanwhile Principal Research Scientist Kevin Hennessy of the CSIRO tells us that there will be 20-40% less snow cover in the alpine ski fields by 2020. By 2030 there will be a 10-50% increase in 35C-plus days.

“There will be less rain in the south but an increase in rain events, storms and stronger cyclones in the north.

“Cairns has been lucky not to have been hit directly by a cyclone, but the odds are that it will be hit at some time in the future.

“By 2050, with expected rises in sea levels, that could see the CBD and airport flooded.

“The area flooded could be double what you’d expect in a one-in-100-year event.”

That could add up to a Katrina style mess.

It will be interesting to see what the report says about the Great Barrier Reef, under threat from warming seas, acidification and indeed sea level rise. In the longer term (second half of the century, if not before) the Gold Coast is in the front line also of sea level rise.

Also the Barossa Valley and Blue Mountains.

Last year Queensland Premier Bligh in one press release announced three projects to export 75 million additional tonnes of coal each year, the latest being Waratah Coal’s Galilee mine.

With the budget mugged by the GFC and natural disasters Queensland has been forced to consider selling some of the government trading corporations. Those coal mining royalties are like rivers of gold.

Vision and leadership is what we need.

Swire also has asked that anyone who considers their business has suffered as a result of the spill to contact the company.

The cynic in me wonders whether that move is basically PR and whether self-interest is the real motivation. Or could it be that here is a case of a corporation acting out of common decency.

In Friday’s Courier Mail (couldn’t find the article on the net) we were told that the 31 “barrels”, that is containers, of ammonium nitrate have been found at sea.

Not so good is the complaint from a citizen of Wurtulla on the Sunshine Coast who reckons that workers simply waltzed in and dumped four bins of contaminated sand on his land and on the empty block next door.

It couldn’t be because he was a Greens candidate in the State election, could it?

Meanwhile, there is concern that Cyclone Hamish, which tracked slowly down the entire length of the Reef, caused the worst damage to the Reef seen in more than 30 years. I heard an opinion that the Reef would take at least a year to recover.

The Queensland Seafood Industry Association has asked the Queensland Government to declare the reef between Bowen and Wide Bay a disaster zone, which would be a first. On the radio I heard that commercial fisher folk, where the normal catch would be 150 fish were now catching 5. The suggestion is that the fisheries will take some months to recover, although no-one really knows.

But perennial spokesman Daniel Gschwind from the Queensland Tourism Industry Council suggested that declaring the Reef a disaster zone could itself be a disaster. Tourists would stay away in droves. Rob Messenger, local LNP MP, finding these issues easier from the position of the opposition benches, says the Government needs to find a middle path. His central task, of course, is to say something that the media will notice.

Last I heard the Government was still considering the matter.

Not to worry, though. Peter Garrett, back at his day job, is watching carefully and his “Government will take any necessary steps to restore parts of the Great Barrier Reef damaged by severe weather.”

Obviously we can all rest easily with Big Pete on the job.