The Labor Member for Cook, Cynthia Lui has spent months of her time putting together legislation to enshrine Torres Strait Islander adoption tradition into law while motorists are being killed on the neglected streets of the largest town in her electorate.

Lui, from Yam Island in the Torres Strait, controversially moved her office from Mareeba, out of the electorate to Cairns earlier this year, leaving the lower half of Cook without representation.

Cook MLA Cynthia Lui has dumped 22,000 constituents from the bottom half of her electorate

She said constituents from the Torres Strait found it hard to contact her in Mareeba, one hour’s drive from Cairns.

She relocated the office to the Commonwealth Centre in Cairns to enable a handful of Torres Strait constituents to meet with her after arriving on subsidised flights from Horn Island.

Ms Lui has dumped the 22,000 residents of Mareeba and Douglas Shires leaving them without state representation.

A spokesman for the largest traditional owner group in the Torres Strait told Cairnsnews the child-rearing practices bill introduced by Ms Lui on Thursday into State Parliament was actually related to an Aboriginal custom and not that of Torres Strait Islanders.

Ms Lui has had an electorate office on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait ever since she was elected.

Meanwhile a female motorcyclist was killed in an accident on congested Byrnes Street in Mareeba on Tuesday when a four wheel drive vehicle drove into the rear of her stationary motorcycle while trying to turn into a service station.

Mareeba has been suffering extreme traffic congestion as thousands of tourist vehicles converged on the arterial main street bottleneck this week, heading north after Covid restrictions were lifted.

The Tablelands’ first set of traffic lights, recently erected at a major intersection in the CBD have caused chaos with local traffic forming long queues during peak hours.

Successive State Governments have refused to construct a heavy vehicle, main street bypass, gazetted for 35 years, to divert hundreds of large trucks driving through the CBD each week while parked cars and converging traffic play Russian roulette with smelly semi-trailers full of Cairns rubbish or others carrying dangerous goods.

A heavy vehicle bypass would have enabled The Main Roads Department to leave the large roundabout intact. The Labor government took the soft option of installing lights for $3.5 million instead of building a more expensive bypass.

Federal Member Bob Katter last week opened an office in Mareeba. He says his staff will help to fill the electoral void left by Ms Lui.

Mr Katter said he was “moving heaven and earth” to get funding for the construction of a heavy vehicle bypass, stipulating the work should go only to local contractors.