Now, there is a new range of Magnus with even more style, more comfort, more standard features,
more value for money, and exceptional space and quietness.
The considerations fall before a new Magna, again in a class of its own.
New Magna from Mitsubishi.
It's here, it's here, the Townsville Show.
Come along with the show and have a chance to win return travel for two to New Zealand.
Relax and enjoy the events in the main arena.
Equestrian, wood chopping, rock drilling, and a spectacular display of fireworks.
This year will be one to remember with the breathtaking Army Aerial Display,
Motorcycle Spectacular, and the Commodore Precision Driving Team.
The Townsville Show. It's still the cheapest but the best entertainment in town.
9am to 9pm, the 3rd to the 5th of July.
Neighbours. Everybody needs good neighbours.
Just a reminder that we're going to wrap up the day's News and Carat Affairs a little later tonight here on NQTV.
News World will be seen at midnight. That's the later time of midnight.
Coming up next, tonight's edition of North Queensland Television News.
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Tonight the High Court decides against the Queensland Government over World Heritage Listing and that million dollar opal virtually worthless.
Good evening. The High Court has rejected Queensland Government moves to overturn World Heritage Listings for Northern Tropical Rainforests.
In a landmark decision, six of the seven member judges ruled against the appeal.
There's already been heated reaction from both sides of politics. In Cairns, the Federal Member for Leichhardt, John Gaylor, praised today's results.
While a disenchanted Minister for Northern Development, Martin Tenney, calls it just another socialist victory.
Everyone knew what the decision would be. I'm just saddened that we have now seen another sordid chapter in the history of World Heritage Listing, which is cost.
The Queensland taxpayer through the Queensland Government millions of dollars. It's not necessary.
And the sooner that the Premier of Queensland takes a responsible approach and position on this, the better.
Because obviously Mr. Munts is running wild. His record is now clear. He's failed on every chance that he's had to put forward the Queensland Government's case.
And I must say that it's somewhat appalling that less than a month ago, Mr. Munts told the residents of Ravensoe that they expected they could win the case.
Today when he was interviewed, he said that they never expected to win it. Now, who's he being fair to?
Meantime, the Minister for Northern Development, Martin Tenney, has reacted strongly and is in no doubt about his feelings.
We've now got a situation that the courts have watered the costs against the Queensland taxpayers.
So Senator Richard should get up on a box in Canberra and see how great he is for knocking about the people of Queensland,
not only in tying up an area and letting it to the wild pigs and dingoes, snakes and whatnot as else,
but to in fact doubly put a burden on the people of Queensland. He's a disgrace and I don't want to know him. I don't want anything to do with him in the future.
The local member John Gala says this now clears the way to compensate the timber workers with monies. What's your reaction to that?
He's John Gala. A major security alert was launched today after a large opal fossil being offered for sale in North Queensland.
The opal featured on last night's news has been linked to notorious Australian businessman Peter Forster, who's still wanted in Britain over the Balintee scandal.
The opalised fossil was offered for sale in good faith by a Port Douglas retailer. On evidence we also accepted about its age and likely value.
But someone who knew better was watching our story, Queensland's Commissioner for Consumer Affairs, Jan Taylor.
So far as we're concerned this is the same piece of fossilised opal that Peter Forster, the notorious con man, was trying to hawk in Australia at the end of last year.
According to the experts, the gem is worth nothing like the claimed $9 million valuation, nor even the $3 million price tag placed on it by agents in Sydney.
Look, maybe $20,000 to $40,000 depending on what's done with it. I mean, okay, perhaps there's some curiosity value leaving it in its present state.
Maybe if it's chopped up they might get $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 for the opal that's there.
Our bottom line I suppose is to tell people not to spend this sort of money on something that's about as unique as a pebble on the beach.
25-year-old Forster has accumulated more than a few pebbles of his own during a high-flying career as an entrepreneur.
He flew out of Australia in February, supposedly for Britain, where he faces fraud charges over the Bay Lynn Slimming Tea episode.
He still hasn't arrived there and is in fact believed to be in the United States.
News of the opal's presence in Port Douglas triggered speculation, official today, that Forster may have brought it back into the country.
But late today customs officials were confident Forster has not returned home.
The fossil was apparently withdrawn from sale in Port Douglas as soon as the shop owners became aware of its questionable links.
North Queensland is set to tap into the lucrative Asian tourist market following a meeting between Cairns City Council and Hong Kong Tourist Agents.
The Hong Kong representatives believe Cairns has become an attractive destination, especially in the wake of Beijing.
60 representatives from Hong Kong's tourist agents gathered in Cairns last night.
The delegation met with the City Council as part of a goodwill gesture to encourage interest in the area.
Convention Chairman Alan Sung said recent events in China have made far north Queensland an attractive destination.
Our people is a little bit hesitate to go to China in these days, so I think they have to find some alternative.
This area should be one of the great places that they should consider.
Mr. Sung went on to say the potential for Cairns is beyond tourism as the countdown approaches for the handover back to China.
Definitely. If your government is really welcome these people, I'm sure that these people is willing to come.
Deputy Mayor of Cairns, Rose Blank, is eager to encourage our Asian neighbours to visit, but actually doesn't want another Gold Coast.
Hospitality as we have shown today certainly helps and I think development, a lot of caution in development because most of the people here today have said, I love the uniqueness of your city, don't spoil it.
We don't want to become a Gold Coast.
No, if they wanted that sort of tourist environment, then they would go elsewhere in the world.
There are 60 people, tourist agents from Hong Kong here today, and they're here because they believe Cairns is very unique.
Its people are extremely friendly and it's a beautiful city in which to visit.
A Liberal Party plan to cut welfare spending by a billion dollars could have disastrous repercussions for North Queensland, according to member for Herbert Ted Lindsay.
Describing the plan as a disgrace, Mr. Lindsay says the move would rob the aged, homeless and the disabled, while putting several North Queensland welfare institutions in jeopardy.
If they were ever allowed to go ahead and form a government, their threat to cut one billion dollars in welfare would seriously affect the viability of every nursing home, every aged person's hostel in North Queensland.
It would seriously jeopardise the confidence of aged pensioners and there are a lot of homeless people in North Queensland, there's a lot of people who have physical disabilities and a whole range of welfare services that could be absolutely devastated
if the Liberal Party were ever to get its way.
What the Liberal Party is saying though is they're not going to cut it to the needy. It's the people who are getting these welfare benefits that shouldn't be. What's your argument?
Well that's a nonsense suggestion by the Liberal Party because the Hawke Government has cut welfare spending as a percentage of gross domestic product from 6.9% in 1983 when we took government
to approximately 6% this year so there's been a dramatic fall in welfare spending simply by targeting welfare to the needy and not those who are not entitled.
Mr. Lindsay, if you've cut it by 1%, can't the Liberals cut it as well? I mean there must be places where there's excessive government spending in welfare.
Well I tell you what, you'd have to turn the beast right around to find one inch of fat that's left.
Northern Anglers will be out in force over the weekend as part of this year's Family Fishing Classic being held in the Townsville region.
The last two days of the event promise to be the biggest with the crab tying championships, the world's richest mud crab race and the Golden Mermaid competition on the card.
Getting underway yesterday, the Family Fishing Classic has already been well supported by the public.
The daily weigh-ins have seen big fish tipping the scales with most of the categories being keenly fought.
However, the highlights of the event will all be held on Sunday at the Dean Park Sound Shell with organisers this year concentrating most of their efforts into this final day.
We've got a series of crab races, we've got the Golden Mermaid Quest which is getting more popular every year and if anybody is looking for a good day's outing in family entertainment, that's the place to be probably on Sunday.
Also among the day's activities will be the final weigh-ins at one o'clock and the richest event on the card, the world's richest mud crab race which will see one lucky punter walk away with $10,000 for a mere $10 entry fee.
The cup is named after the mayors of the Twin Cities, something which tickles the fancy of Thurringour Mayor Dan Gleeson who even took on the unenviable task of wrestling with this huge muddy just for the cameras.
I think when people in the South see the size of the muddies that we have up here and what a wonderful climate we've got, they won't be able to resist, they'll be hearing their droves.
On Sunday, organisers are also expecting a new world record to be set in the crab tying competition.
Friday night's news will continue after this break.
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Each January, people from all over Australia and beyond flock to Tamworth for a wonderful week of good times and good music.
Now, all the excitement of this year's Tamworth Country Music Festival is available on video.
Tamworth 89, nearly three hours of festival highlights.
High, high country, start love and say goodbye.
Here's a long night on cheer-drive.
And we're out to deal with this handsome looking doll now.
Oh, body of that little maid.
Oh, the girl in the car, we are the best we ever knew.
There are colourful street buskers, the blue-grass pickers and the star-maker finalists.
Tamworth 89 is a fast-paced, high-quality video, nearly three hours long and cost just $65.
Fund this 008 number at any time to order your copy of the Tamworth 89 video.
This Saturday and Sunday, history comes alive at the centenary celebrations of Victoria Bridge.
Becoming derelict in the late 1970s, just look at our bridge now.
For two days, terrific entertainment, great food and drink and dozens of fun things to see and do.
All day entertainment that will thrill the whole family.
Saturday the first and Sunday the second of July. Don't miss it.
Kirwan Women's Hospital Director Dr Robert Likeman today denied Townsville's maternity facility at Thuringou will be closed down.
Dr Likeman quashed the rumours during a special event at the hospital celebrating the birth of baby number 4000.
And this is baby Stephen New, Kirwan Hospital's 4000th baby to be born in the past two and a half years.
Despite being born eight and a half weeks premature, Stephen is fighting fit.
But proud mother Evonne is fighting all the fuss a little hard to believe.
They told me yesterday nothing happened, just pulled on my leg.
Just as proud with the hospital's accomplishment is Dr Robert Likeman,
who's seen the hospital grow from its humble beginnings to a fully-fledged maternity facility.
I think you only have to look around and see what has been achieved here,
particularly where we're standing here at the moment in the neonatal intensive care unit,
to see that there has been tremendous advance in the services which are now available in Townsville.
But amongst all the festivity there's been speculation of the hospital's closure, rumours Dr Likeman dispels.
This is the only public facility in Townsville.
There isn't anywhere else for public patients to go and in the foreseeable future I can't imagine
that there could be any alternative to the continuation of this hospital.
So it won't be closed down?
Over my dead body.
Details from a recent meeting between the Ward 10B Victims Action Group
and the Townsville Hospital's Board are being withheld.
After unsuccessfully attempting to obtain a transcript from the meeting,
the Victims Action Group is taking legal advice.
Group spokesman, the member for Tharingow, Ken McGalligot, says he believed the meeting was public
and that withholding such information from the community may be a breach of the Hospitals Act.
Mr McGalligot says the meeting's transcripts are vital evidence
in efforts to open a public inquiry into the psychiatric unit.
He claims the Hospital Board is protecting people who should be exposed.
Caring for our forests is the theme of this Sunday's Ingham District Forestry Open Day.
District Forester Les Hawkes says 25 displays, demonstrating the practical applications of forests
and a range of fun activities, make it an ideal family outing.
The last Ingham Open Day was held three years ago,
before the World Heritage Listing controversy hit the area and many of its timber workers.
Mr Hawkes claims visitors will learn forests still have a commercial role to play.
There will be formal displays, tents showing people everything from how we grow pine trees
to how we look after our rainforests, through to the research on timber,
the termites, all sorts of problems like that.
And then the practical side of it is we've got demonstration forests,
which are within simple walking distance, where people can come and see 60-odd varieties,
from flowering shrubs that attract birds, right through to commercial trees
that they could establish in their forest plots.
Bus tours will be conducted from the Ingham Forestry Depot and Nursery,
through Red Cedar forests, and the latest advances in growing techniques will be displayed
for a large range of trees.
Demonstrations of traditional timber hand tools, Bush Band the River rattlers,
and a variety of timber orientated competitions are all part of the program.
There will be plenty of giveaways also.
I help pay for the trip. We're giving away about a thousand trees.
A lot of them are birds and butterfly attractors,
particularly the ones that attract the Dunk Island or the Ulysses Blue Butterfly.
Member for Herbert Ted Lindsay has ruled out moving to Cairns the recompression chamber,
currently located at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville.
Member for Cairns Keith De Lacy says the far northern city is the capital of the Australian diving industry,
and it made far better sense to relocate the chamber to Cairns,
rather than to the Townsville General Hospital.
I wouldn't be asking that we relocate one from Townsville,
unless the State Government was really doing something about it.
But what they are doing now is proposing to relocate the existing unit
from the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville to the Townsville Base Hospital.
Now if they're going to all the time and trouble of doing that,
it ought to be relocated in Cairns because Cairns is where the action is.
However, speaking in Townsville, Federal MP Ted Lindsay discarded the proposal.
It may be of benefits in having a decompression chamber in Cairns,
but the fact of the matter is that there is only one of them,
and it's better located in Townsville rather than Cairns,
because of not only for people who suffer diving accidents,
but also for a whole range of treatment under compression that can be done here in Townsville,
which is a major teaching hospital.
Sport is next. Tonight looking at basketball, rugby league, soccer and racing.