Is this fair.

You buy a business, then, as part of the process you sign a lease.

Now this usually involves pledging your assetts, which is a huge risk in most people's eyes.

Then, half way through you lease the turnover drops due to circumstances beyond your control and you go broke.

Now if your rent is say $150,000 per year And you have teo years left, chances are you will loose your house.

Is that fair?

I'm in Cairns now & I tell you that place is on the brink of disaster. Hardly any tourists. Govt must do away with all these extra charges which hamper this industry. Everyone's trying to pu on a brave face but the reality is that 2 out of three shops are closed. The rest sell cheap crappy souveniers made God knows where. Cairns now lives off Govt spending than the other way round.

Yes indi, I know a guy who recently closed a rest up there.

Went to the LL, emplty restaurant, put a lease in place, then the crash.

He now faces the prospect of being sued for $600,000 for reneging on his lease.

The place was empty until he came along.

BTW, one of the main causes of his closure was the changes to IR which made trading Sundays not viable.

$6000 trading gone, 16 shifts lost, all in a place that can't afford it.

How smart is this government. And to think they were warned.

A simple surcharge could have prevented this, but it is illegal in QLD.

You did the right thing Hasbeen.On a shrinking market ,it was poor selection of business.Only really small operators can survive that type of industry.The areas of growth will be security,food,debt collecting,shelter etc.It is back to basics and the recovery will be long and hard.

I am afraid that the tourism business is in for a long drought.
All governments, except China are saying the same thing;
Growth is very low or is reducing rapidly.
Without growth in the economy nothing new can get off the ground.
Tourism being an optional spend will always be one of the first to
feel the cold wind.
All that businesses in similar fields can do is reduce overheads
and put their activity into maintaining the status quo.
They do this in the hope of a recovery, but until we successfully
transition to a new energy regime their plant, buildings and equipment
will deteriorate until the business simply dies of old age.

This is what happens when energy costs eat your GDP.

Well has been we certainly can relate to this, as I was employed at south Mole in t mid 80's just when th island was changing from Telford to Ansett.

We had to place our order for meats, pay for it, then wait for it to be delivered, usually 3 to 5 days min.

Accounting was not as advanced as today, so I can understand how this mess could have been covered up.

As for. Boats, they ran as Fantsea for quite some time, however, I think they have gone as well.

The fact of the matter is that this is an industry that has been over run by regulation and fees and, it has simply folded and there is little hope it willl recover in any real capacity, especially in the near future.

Even the large back packer business up ther has folded simply because back packers no longer come here to travel, they only come here to top up thier banks, then travel OS, because we have the highest wages on offer, at the expense of our torisum and hospitality industries. But hey, governments know best.