Tag Archives: cairns

Qld unemployment hot spots – Ipswich, Cairns and Wide Bay

I’ve prepared some maps of regional unemployment rates based on last week’s new regional labour force data from the ABS for February 2014 (see below). The figures I’ve used are taken from Queensland Treasury’s information brief, which presents 12-month moving … Continue reading

Posted in Labour market | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Top twenty largest cities and towns in Queensland by population

I get quite a few hits on my blog from people searching for the populations of Queensland cities, particularly Townsville, given an old post of mine: Is Townsville or Cairns the capital of North Qld?. Hence I’ve decided to chart Queensland Treasury’s … Continue reading

Posted in Cairns, Population, Townsville | Tagged , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Chinese tourism boom for Cairns?

Cairns business leaders have been pinning their hopes on a surge in Chinese tourism for a while now, and they remain confident according to a Cairns Post report from yesterday (Could Cairns be on the cusp of a Chinese tourism … Continue reading

Posted in Cairns, Tourism | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Qld Treasury Corporation sees improving economic outlook

The latest Weekly Market and Economics Review for 8 October from Queensland Treasury Corporation (QTC) nicely summarises recent data showing an improving economic outlook across Australia: Last week’s dataflow was generally better than expected and consistent with the recent more … Continue reading

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Effective population numbers much higher than usual residents in central and western Qld (and Cairns)

Some interesting data were released by the ABS today comparing the number of people counted in each local government area (LGA) on Census night compared with the number of usual residents (see chart below). The chart shows the ratio of … Continue reading

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Michael Porter on Cairns’s tourism cluster

In a recent talk (Social Progress and Competitive Growth), Michael Porter illustrated the concept of an industry cluster using the Cairns tourism sector as an example (see figure below from Porter’s presentation). Basically I think it illustrates just how difficult … Continue reading

Posted in Industry policy, Tourism | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Townsville vs Cairns again

Having grown up in Townsville I’m very aware of the intense rivalry between Townsville and Cairns, which is partly a battle over which city should win the meaningless title of capital of North Queensland (see Is Townsville or Cairns the … Continue reading

Posted in Cairns, Townsville | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Good news on Qld coal exports and tourism

The Queensland Transport Minister Scott Emerson released some encouraging figures on coal exports yesterday, which I’ve charted below (Ports back to pre-GFC coal volumes): In part, the strong growth rates in the chart above reflect the coal industry recovering from … Continue reading

Posted in Mining, Tourism | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Hong Kong billionaire backs Cairns – expect confidence boost in Far North tourism sector

In fantastic news for Cairns, very recently reported by the Financial Review (Billionaire’s QLD casino plan gets speed-up): Hong Kong billionaire Tony Fung’s $4.2 billion international casino and resort project in Cairns has been gazetted by the Queensland government, essentially speeding … Continue reading

Posted in Cairns, Tourism | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Tourism recovering nicely on Gold Coast, not so elsewhere

Tourism and Events Queensland (TEQ) released some Regional Snapshots for the year ended 2013 yesterday, and they show a good result for the Gold Coast (see Gold Coast Regional Snapshot), with total visitors up 9%, but less inspiring and somewhat … Continue reading

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