Gavin King

Gavin King is the Assistant Minister for Tourism and your CanDo Member for Cairns.

In a variety of senior roles as a journalist over the past decade, Gavin has been at the coalface of issues in a range of communities big and small.

Gavin was so determined to be a journalist he started his first business – a  music magazine – at the age of 15. By the age of 21, he had worked his way up to become the editor of weekly magazine Revolver, one of the largest weekly publications in Sydney.

In 2000, he took a job with aid agency World Vision in the community of Papunya, west of Alice Springs, to work with Aboriginal people addicted to petrol sniffing. He spent two years at the community, project managing the building of a recording studio that is still successfully operating to help people recover from the scourge of addiction.

Gavin returned to journalism in 2003, and for the past eight years he has worked in senior positions for The Centralian Advocate, The Cairns Post and The Sunday Mail. His various roles have included political reporter, business editor, North Queensland correspondent, chief of staff and finally editor-at-large at The Cairns Post, where he became the face of the newspaper with regular appearances on TV and radio segments, and a large online presence.

Gavin has spearheaded a number of community campaigns in Cairns, including the successful CBD Revive campaign that galvanised broad support  to pressure the local council and State Labor Government to take action on the Cairns CBD after a long period of neglect.

His focus as the CanDo Member for Cairns will be getting the tropical city back on track after years of poor leadership by local Labor MPs.

Gavin met and married his wife Leah in Cairns, and their first child Saskia was born at Cairns Base Hospital in 2010. 

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