Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Magnetic Island is just off the coast of Townsville. It is a truly wonderful place. It sits within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It is the jewel in Townsville's tourism crown. It is a quick 20-minute ride in a ferry across to Nelly Bay. Can I tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that during the campaign leading up to the 2010 election we came out and promised a walkway from Nelly Bay around the front of Bright Point, around Geoffrey Bay through to Alma Bay and the Arcadian Surf Life Saving Club. It would be the most fantastic walk in the world. It would be the walk equivalent of the Great Ocean Road. It would be absolutely magnificent.

Labor matched our promise of $4.7 million to build this walkway. It has long been needed on Magnetic Island, and I will tell you why. To get from Nelly Bay to Arcadia or Alma Bay you have to come out of Nelly Bay and go up over the steepest of hills. It is a backpacker haven. You have people there carrying great big backpacks up a steep hill with no sidewalk, only a rail beside the white line. You could step out and fall all the way down into the ocean. How no-one has been killed there is completely and utterly beyond everyone. My first attempt to get funding for this was actually under black spot legislation, but unfortunately not enough people have been killed. So the fact that it is a very, very steep hill and you have backpackers and tourists crossing that hill on foot and on pushbike makes it very hard. I won the election—best result ever.

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