The launch of the Lagaw Kuyup Rescue Service in Cairns on 30 August was absolutely a huge win for emergency medical assistance in the northernmost part of the state, but it was in no way the most significant healthcare revelation for Cape York made on the day. Photo: Lyndon Keane
There’s an old adage in journalism about “burying the lede”, which refers to hiding the most important and relevant aspects of a story within other distracting information. It’s an unforgivable mistake among those of us who tell tales for a living, and something likely to result in an editor hurling a piece of office equipment in your direction back in the good old days of newsrooms when clickbait was something you employed to catch a fish and smoking was permitted – nay encouraged – at the typewriter.
But it’s exactly what the State Government did on Friday morning when it assembled more media and stakeholders in one place than anywhere in recent memory to announce the launch of the two new helicopters that will form the Lagaw Kuyup Rescue Service servicing the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area.
Don’t get me wrong. Only a lunatic would criticise two new 24/7 emergency helicopters being rolled out to service the northernmost part of the state, even if it happened less than 60 days away from a state election amid fanfare even the most politically unjaded reporter – yes, there are a few of them around – quietly suggested may have something to do with pork barrelling and retaining Cook for the incumbent government.
For the record, I haven’t fallen into the category of politically unjaded for about a decade now, and it was in fact one of the questions I lobbed at Minister for Health, Mental Health and Ambulance Services Shannon Fentiman at the press conference that triggered the revelation the Miles Government had sharpened the pencil to deliver the new $200 million Cooktown Hospital three years faster than the timeframe it announced two-and-a-half months ago when the 2024-25 budget was released.
After I asked the question in front of my media brethren and about two dozen assembled stakeholders, Minister Fentiman and one of her advisers bailed me up as I was checking out the eye-catching Leonardo AW139 helicopter on the Cairns Hospital helipad to suggest my criticism of helicopters over regional hospitals in terms of government priorities wasn’t going to fly.
Apparently, the Cooktown Hospital was no longer a seven-year project that would have patients being welcomed less than 12 months out from Brisbane hosting the 2032 Olympic Games. I had it wrong and was unfair in my criticism, Minister Fentiman said. I was asking questions based on false information, her adviser proffered. I repeated the facts and figures the State Government had shouted from the rooftop at budget time. The minister looked at her adviser. The adviser looked at the minister. They both looked at me. I stared blankly back at them and reiterated there had been no announcement I could find to suggest Cooktown would now have its new hospital in four years.
Minister Fentiman confirmed less than 15 minutes later the $200m staged project would now be completed in the 2027-28 financial year, more than 36 months ahead of the publicly announced schedule. The government had just failed to let anyone – including journalists like me who had pilloried the original completion date – know it had knocked more than 40 per cent off the timeframe to deliver an already long-overdue piece of critical health infrastructure.
How the government and its battalion of spin doctors could have failed to promote the updated timeframe boggles the mind and opens the door to a lot of questions about public sector competency, but it’s a victory the Cooktown community and greater region will readily take as the statewide election battle heats up. Perhaps if Cape York and the Torres Strait encompassed more than one state seat, we would have been drowned by a tsunami of government backslapping, chest beating and media releases.
I will readily admit I’ve been one of the government’s most vocal critics when it comes to the delivery of healthcare in our part of the world. It has at times been acerbic, gloves-off criticism, and I won’t apologise for that, because it’s our role as a newspaper serving some of the remotest and most vulnerable people in Queensland. But I will set aside the criticism and take my hat off to Minister Fentiman for committing to make Cooktown’s new hospital a reality three years ahead of schedule, even if we wouldn’t have known about it were it not for a shot across the bow at a press conference about dragonfly motif helicopters.
