J
obs, jobs and jobs! Without development
we’re doomed! Economic injections,
passengers to local businesses, eco-marine
parks and better dive sites, oh and no
changes to the surf. How about an enhanced
environment and even more jobs! These are
the bright themes that have been forcibly
rammed down the throats of Gold Coasters
for the last two years, but there’s some serious
problems here, and scratching beneath the
wafer-thin surface of these claims reveals
that not all is what it seems in tinsel town.
It’s been a process about as convoluted
as a bucket full of live spiders and wasps.
Somehow we’ve gone from a mayor
who clearly campaigned specifically for
no development at all on the Spit or on
Wavebreak Island, to the mother of all
commercial foreign land grabs, comprising of
a mega shipping port, massive foreign casino
and hotel developments, a new residential
suburb, a gargantuan dredging scheme and
the loss of around 100 hectares of prime
public spaces to a foreign consortium.
Before we start, let’s revisit Tom Tate’s
unambiguous election promises that he
campaigned with for many months into the
last local election.
“The Cruise ship Terminal was mentioned
but so was protecting the spit in equal
proportions. I think we should leave the
spit for families, fisherman and surfers ...
Camp grounds and day trip facilities for
wavebreak is a yes for me but fifty storey
hotels will be a “no” from me.” - Tom
Tate, lifted straight from Tom’s own official
campaign website.
This clear statement remained up as his
promise to the people for many months as
he campaigned, right into the last mayoral
election. It was only 24 hours before the
polls opened, that quietly he slipped a vague
‘cruise ship terminal’ policy up onto his
website (view it here), for a tiny public-owned
floating terminal at The Spit, to be specifically
funded by ratepayers and not involve any
foreign ownership or privatisation. There was
no announcement made that it even existed.
There is overwhelming evidence proving Tate
campaigned for no commercial development
in the area, even after his shock cruise terminal
announcement. He specifically pledged no
‘fifty storey towers’ on Wavebreak, but, in
an almost Freudian outcome the current
proposal both smashes his election platform
and contains an exact ‘fifty storey tower’.
Surely such revelations would sink this
project before it even floated, right? Not
according to the state government, which has
now steamrolled council to spearhead the
‘offering’ of our public land up for this foreign
monstrosity. It was Queensland Premier
Campbell Newman himself, and his miningmaniacal mate Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney,
who watered and fed the falsehoods to argue
that they have a right to hand over the island
and the central Gold Coast broadwater to a
shadowy Chinese consortium. At the time,
Newman shocked the community by trying to
defend his government’s path, aligning himself
with Tate. Despite the clear evidence that was
already common knowledge regarding Tate’s
nonexistent cruise ship mandate, Newman’s
remarks evidently held as much water as a
mug made from flyscreen.
“We have a mayor down at the Gold Coast,
mayor Tom Tate, who as I clearly recall
campaigned saying by the (next) election,
he wanted to build a Gold Coast cruise
terminal. And I said at the time as the newly
elected Premier, that if he was elected, we
would back him ... What my government is
doing, is backing up a mayor who had the
guts to go to the electorate saying this is
what he wanted to do, and we will back
him.” - Hon Campbell Newman, Premier Of
Queensland, November 21 2012, ABC Radio.