Community
15 March, 2025
Revealed: Uni’s new campus
CQUNIVERSITY has revealed what its proposed Grafton St campus will look like as well as appealing for more government cash to complete the $87.5 million development.
Construction is set to begin at the end of 2025 opposite the Cairns Convention Centre with $50m funding from the Australian Government.
However, the university is calling for extra funding of $27.5m from both the federal and state governments to include an allied health and engineering building to address skill shortages in the region.
CQU intends to provide an extra $10m for the wing and in total it would boost student numbers by 2000 to 6000 and add another 13 new courses, including medical imaging and occupational therapy.
The project – including the additional allied health building – is scheduled for completion by the end of 2027 for a total cost of $87.5m.
CQU vice chancellor and president Professor Nick Klomp said the new campus would mean a boost in students, new programs and better outcomes in the retention of graduates.
“It will be an amazing modern campus that will provide 45 courses to the Cairns community, but it’s more than just a building, a campus like this provides so much more opportunities,” he said.
“People that are finishing school and thinking about university but couldn’t afford to move down south to follow their chosen career will be able to stay in Cairns.
“This has been enabled by a $50m commitment by the federal government in the last election. We’ll start building later this year to be completed by the end of 2027 in time for the first term of 2028 intake.
“In the last 12 months, when the funding was initially released and we started the detail planning alongside the workforce, we uncovered an opportunity. Instead of allowing for a capacity of 4000 students in this campus, we could add a wing. We call it the health and engineering wing because it’s those areas of allied health and nursing and all the disciplines of engineering that are so desperately required in this region.
“We can add that wing at the same time and be doing it within the same period, so we’ll still finish by the end of 2027 and it will cost $37.5m. We’re asking for all the major parties to get behind Cairns, get behind CQU and commit to $27.5m of extra funding.
“We need these graduates now and Cairns shouldn’t be forced to wait again and again for the sort of things that are available in metropolitan areas at all times.”
Prof Klomp said the additional wing would address critical shortages in the engineering and health industries and create more jobs.
“These courses allow us for the flexibility and the innovative ways of using labs and simulation labs for different disciplines,” he said.
“And this new wing allows us to build the capacity from 4000 (in the original plan) to 6000 (with the additional wing). A few years ago, we didn’t think that Cairns needed that, but then we’ve worked out the workforce demand on all the skills required for a future workforce and we’ve realised that we need to futureproof this.
“We’ve done the numbers, we’ll have enough staff to do this, we’ve also done the sums and 86 per cent of CQU Cairns graduates stay in Cairns, so how is that for a return on investment?”
Mr Klomp said that if there was no government funding the project would go along without the health and engineering wing.
