The Cairns Times is an independent, progressive newsletter, created by citizens, who are concerned that Cairns has gone nowhere in the last four years. It is funded and produced by locals, not by a political party.

Ratepayers are bearing the cost of project blowouts.

The Tobruk pool is not the only project to have a cost blowout. Manning's team announced $65M to rebuild the Civic Theatre. Before the work even started, the estimate had blown out by $11.5M.

After declaring it would go it alone for  theatre funding, Council made a last minute demand on the State and Federal Governments to provide $30M towards the cost. It didn't lobby for its proposal or negotiate in advance, and it hasn't secured any funding agreement.  Duhhh.

That's not the way to get things done.

What's holding Cairns back?

The current council is plodding along, complacent, thinking only months ahead when we really need a local government that thinks about and plans for the 21st century.

At council meetings, councillors hardly ever contribute or talk about their local divisions. There's no debate and no challenges to Mayor Manning's one-man-band style of leadership.

This year Manning's team approved a pest management plan which included the long-gone Douglas Shire Council area: councillors hadn't even bothered to read it; they were asleep on the job. They approved putting power lines overhead rather than underground, acting in breach of their own development guidelines. They approved the aquarium development with reduced number of car parks; going against council regulations and ensuring it will be even harder to get a car park in the city.

Council has not been paying attention to properly managing major projects. Take the Tobruk Pool. They initially declared it would cost nearly $15M and be completed by April 2015 to coincide with the Gallipoli centenary. Now the cost has blown out to $23.7M and it won't be open until April 2016, a year behind schedule.