Pepe Iovannella is one of the largest tour operators in Cairns. Cairns have suffered more than any other city in Australia because of COVID restrictions which has decimated the tourism industry.

Pepe tells us that even though the Labor government promised to dredge Trinity Inlet to allow large boats to increase opportunities, they have reneged on the deal.

Transcript

[Malcolm Roberts]

Hi, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts and I’m in Trinity Inlet in Cairns. You see a Cruise Ship here, Trawler behind us and recreational boats and Trawlers on the other side of Trinity Inlet. Now I’m with Pepe Iovannella. How’s that?

[Pepe Iovannella]

Correct.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Thank you.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Perfect.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Pepe’s family is the owner of the largest tour operator Australian family owned tour operator in Cairns. They did tours to the Reef and he’s got many other businesses.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Yap.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Cairns depends on tourism, right Pepe?

[Pepe Iovannella]

We’re a key element of Cairns. We’re probably in the top five if not the first. It’s crucial for our business and obviously in a COVID year we’ve been struggling and if it wasn’t for JobKeeper, we’d be definitely, most of operators be closed by now.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Right. So the government’s restrictions around COVID state and federal have gutted Cairns. Cairns has suffered more than any other community in the country. It’s income gross domestic product has gone down 16%. It’s economy is folding.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Yes.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And it needs to come out of that. And what Pepe is doing, is he can see that the trend is toward larger Cruise vessels to get higher turnover. And yet the Port Authority is being restricted by the state government. So we kinda, you won’t get those larger boats.

[Pepe Iovannella]

So back in 2016, when they announced to dredge to allow larger Cruise ships, which are crucial to Cairns they bring millions of dollars of money and passengers and tourist numbers. They promised us four million cubic metres of dredging. After they got elected.

[Malcolm Roberts]

So just before the election.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Before the election.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And before the election they promised 120 million dollars.

[Pepe Iovannella]

All parties agreed and Labor were last to come on board. They finally agreed to dredge and give us the money for four million cubic metres. If they won, and whoever won that election and Labor won the election. So they had to commit to honour their commitment and promised us four million cubic metres. Two years later we got 700,000 which essentially is our maintenance dredging for the year.

[Malcolm Roberts]

That’s about 16% of what they promised.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Correct.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And so it’s very important to understand that Trinity Inlet is fed by creeks and just like every other inlet fed by creeks and rivers silt comes in. Silt builds up when it hits the stagnant water or the steady water of the ocean and silt fills up the Harbour. And so you have maintenance dredging to keep the Harbour at the right level.

And then you have capital dredging, which expands, deepens, widens the Harbour. And so Cairns is gonna miss out. It would missed out on the maintenance dredging and it is gonna miss out on the capital dredging to get these bigger cruise vessels.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Yeah. You know obviously as time goes on the Cruise ships get bigger. We need to cater as, even as the commercials our commercial vessels have got bigger over time. Cruise ships get bigger. We need to cater for Cruise ships. And that’s why it’s imperative that we get back and do the four million cubic metres of dredging that was promised by the Labor Party.

[Malcolm Roberts]

But Cairns, I didn’t realise this. Cairns has the largest, has the largest number of vessel movements of any regional port in Australia. Correct?

[Pepe Iovannella]

Correct. Yeah we got the largest number of class one vessels, class three vessels. We have the highest number- the Trawler industry is huge in Cairns. We have Reef boats that go out. The Coral Princess goes out taking passengers over board. So we got all those apart from our day passengers.

So we’ve got a whole plethora of combination of boats that run out of Port and and which makes us the number one port in Australia.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And what happened to this port was that somebody in their wisdom, and without any scientific evidence the state government moved the port limit, sorry moved the National Park limit to within the port. So that stopped any dredging within the port. I mean, this is dumb. It goes completely against the science.

So that then led to a large fight but you’ve also got not only the state government but the globalists and the federal government people like Greg Hunt at the time who all bowed to the almighty people in the WWF and the other UN led organisations which are now choking Cairns. That’s basically it.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Correct, yeah. So we’ve got the largest fleet in Australia running out of port, and yet we’re not a priority port. You know other ports, there’s four other ports in Queensland that are priority ports.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Townsville, Gladstone, Mackay and Hay Point.

[Pepe Iovannella]

And yet we’re the number one port for movements. Number one port for maintenance. People relying on boats that earn their income, Trawler industry, and yet we’re still stifled by the Labor government, by not allowing us to have priority. So if we had priority port status, that would fix a lot of our issues.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And this is so stupid. We’ve got cruise liners anchored off the coast here and passengers being ferried in and out. We’d have far more people, if they could put their feet on the ground. If they tied up here at a decent wharf and could get out and spend their money at service stations, motels, entertainment, restaurants and that’s what Cairns is missing out on.

Cairns is being belted by international tourism shutdown because of the airline traffic, being belted by the Cruise industry being shut down. But when you finally get out again you wanna thrive and you can’t do that with these dopey buggers in government

[Pepe Iovannella]

We’re the ideal port to be a turnaround port for Cruise ship industry. There’s the Brisbane port has been increased and they’ve spent a billion dollars on Brisbane port yet they don’t wanna spend a cent here in Cairns. So they’re stifling Cairns growth.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And get this, they see tankers taking oil from Northern countries down to Brisbane, putting it on road tankers and transporting it up by truck to Cairns. How stupid is that when these tankers should be unloading here? I mean, they’re just holding the North back holding the state back.

[Pepe Iovannella]

The stupidest thing is that sugar industry can’t even pick up from the sugar terminals anymore. ‘Cause obviously the ships are bigger, so they can’t fill the capacity. So we’re only half filling the sugar ships out of Cairns.

[Malcolm Roberts]

We blame the United Nations for the blue and the green tape but we especially blame the people who just bow to the UN. State and federal globalists, and that’s it. They’re the ones destroying the city.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Absolutely, 100% agreement.