Recent Bulletin stories highlight why I think there is such a mood for change amongst Gold Coast voters. It highlights everything that’s wrong with this Council and why none of the sitting Councillors running for Mayor can be considered credible candidates.

Where is that ‘have a go’ spirit that the Gold Coast was built on?

I’m sure people told Sir Bruce Small he couldn’t do things, they wouldn’t work. But where would we be as a city if he’d not persevered.

I’m a realist, and yes some of my plans with take hard work, boot leather, knocking on doors and a lot of persuasion of Councillors, fellow ratepayers, State and Federal politicians; but is that a reason not to have a go – of course not.

In business when people ask why, I say why not. Other mayoral candidates say my plans can’t be done. I can understand their thinking given their personal track records of failure for our city.

Can’t is not a word successful business people settle for. It’s not a word the Mayor of the Gold Coast should settle for.

The Councillors running for mayor have been settling for can’t, won’t, don’t bother, too hard, forget about it and too late for far too long.

I’ve found in over 20 years of business life, there are always solutions; you just need to look for them.

Tenacity is the key to success. If you get blocked one way, you find and try another and another until you eventually succeed.

People that know me well will tell you that I about finding solutions.

Former Councillors, like Sarroff, Young and Douglas are naysayers, complainers, whiners and wingers. It’s the State Governments fault or it’s the Feds who are to blame or it’s the Global Financial Crisis or the banks won’t lend any more or the Council CEO let us down or Council Staff won’t tell us the facts.

The point is that it’s time that they take a good, long, hard look at themselves

‘No’ is the easiest thing in the world for a Government to say. For eight years, we’ve endured a Council leadership that has found reasons not to do things, complicated the most simple of processes, grown a bureaucracy and delivered fewer services at a higher cost to rate payers.

But, people of the Gold Coat aren’t fools. They know with the right person at the helm and the right approach, we can get things done and make all the difference.

If a piece of legislation needs a change, so seniors can get a better deal, then I’ll ask Campbell Newman to change the legislation.  For a man who ran on a cost of living platform and received the biggest mandate in the State’s history, I don’t think he’ll say no.

If we need to lobby the State to get additional funding for a road, we’ll do it.  If we need to look at private finance to support a new cultural centre, then I’ll do it.

The problem with these want-to-be Mayoral candidates is they don’t have the experience at problem solving to think outside the box and that’s what we desperately need on the Gold Coast right now.

Over the coming weeks, I will release more details and costed plans that demonstrate clearly how I will pay my plans and timelines for delivery. As I have been doing, I will continue to release all my detailed policy costings and identified savings well before polling day.

Isn’t it remarkable that not one candidate has supplied properly documented policies, costings and plans but all are screaming that I should release more of mine. All we get from the former Councillors is dot points and great slabs of stolen content from existing Council policy documents. The city deserves more for its candidates for Mayor.

When Cr Young made the outlandish promise of a 10% rate cut, did any of the other mayoral candidates explode with demands to see his costings? When Cr Douglas promised to get rid of all the rubbish tips across the city, has anyone asked for her detailed plan? When former Cr Sarroff claimed to be able to save $30 Million off the budget, has anyone asked to see the breakdown?

I want to make sure that when Gold Coasters go to vote they will have a clear choice. Voters can stick with the existing Councillors running for Mayor or opt for a fresh start, fresh thinking and a new approach to solving our city’s problems from me.

These sudden attacks are more to do with polling, positioning and posturing. Isn’t it interesting that only a week ago they were all crying out for “no more negative attacks”. Well it seems a week is a long time in politics because it is coming thick and fast from them now.

The choice will be clear on April 28th: more of the same from Councillors like Young, Sarroff and Douglas who have been there for up to 17 years, have had their chance and failed; or someone with a track record of successful delivery, that despite the challenges will get things done to deliver ratepayers lower rates and get the Gold Coast working again.

The former councillors running for Mayor have a policy approach that wouldn’t have worked years ago. Under them, we would never have built our airport to international standard, we would never have constructed nor extended the Convention Centre, we would never have raised the hinze dam for water storage, we would never have bid for nor secured the Commonwealth Games and we would never have seen the creation of the marine precinct.

Every successful infrastructure and event attraction projects for our city started with an idea, that became a concept, that was developed into a detailed plan that emerged as a priority, then was detailed and costed and after a major lobbying at all levels of government, was eventually built.

Council is the local Government for its citizens. Early support and early money for major projects is like yeast, it helps raised the big dough to get these big projects off the ground and implemented in the city.

The next Mayor of this city needs to have the ideas and the determination to see them through with energy, business experience and drive.

Our Council is in a debt trap.  And I am not talking about AllConnex and its $80 million divorce.

The full Queensland Treasury Corporation Credit Review report (not the executive summary that Council released), that I managed to get my hands on this week, is frightening reading.

It reveals that this Council has been financing its ‘living’ through borrowing more and more money.

As a Council it’s been ‘living beyond your means’ to the tune of over $95 million dollars a year on average since 2007 and the current plan will see this trend continue until 2020!

That’s right, our council has been spending more than it gets on rates and other non-debt related revenue for the last five years and plans to do so for the next 8 years at least.

In short, Council’s credit card has been getting a work out to pay for the day to day operations of our city.

This is like extending your mortgage every week to pay for groceries, petrol and holidays.

Obviously the groceries and petrol (basic council services) have to keep being paid but its time we stopped this council going on ‘holidays’.

In business, you never ever borrow money to fund operations, only expansion. You borrow money for new buildings, new equipment and other capital purchases that are designed to expand your market, make you more efficient or to grow your business. The big banks and financial institutions I have dealt with don’t loan money to pay for operational expenses!

Our city debt is ballooning.

By 2015, gross interest bearing liabilities (debt) will increase to over one billion dollars! Our net debt, that is loans minus cash, essentially will double to $344 million in 2012 and almost double again to over $650 million in 2015.

Is it any wonder our city credit rating has fallen not one, but two spots, to a “moderate – negative” outlook.

What comes after “moderate” I hear you ask?    Well, there’s “weak”, “very weak” and “distressed”.

We used to be “strong” back in 2009. And, the “negative” part in the credit rating means that there are no plans in council in place that will improve our credit rating anytime soon!

Looking through the figures confirmed for me, what we have all known (but this Council tried to convince us otherwise through clever spin) that historically, rates and utilities charges revenue per ratable property have increased by an average of around 8.0% per annum from 2007 to 2011.

That’s right, while Finance Chair Cr Eddy Sarroff has been proudly saying: “I’ve kept rates increases below 5%.” We’ve really being paying much more.

The 8% by the way is not my figure but those of the Queensland Treasury Corporation (QTC). Clearly the 5% claims were complete bunkum.

The QTC reports that in the last year alone, 2010 to 2011, rates and utility charges revenue has actually increased by 9.9%!

It’s not AllConnex completely at fault either.

The new computer system (or ERP enterprise resource planning system) was originally budgeted at around $25 million but has now blown out to almost $80 million and is likely to blow out further to over $120 million. Some experts I have been speaking to reckon that by the end of its implementation, the city won’t get much change from $200 million!

And, just what is this new computer system expected to save in financial year 2012?  $0, zero, nada, nothing!  What savings can we expect in 2013?  Try $1.1 million on for size.

For an outlay of at least $120 million, the city will save $1.1 million a year. In 120 years we’ll have that sucker paid off!  Except for the interest payments, of course.

So what the Council’s solution?

What have the existing Councillors including Sarroff, Young and Douglas, all of whom are running for Mayor voted to do to solve this spiraling debt trap?

Well, it’s pretty simple really, their plan is to increase your rates by up to 10% a year for the next decade.

In fact, according to the QTC report the Council is relying on rate increases to bring it back to surplus, without them our capacity to do anything, will be severely limited, according to the report.

In the coming year, this council will again run an operating deficit in the order of over $114 million dollars if nothing is done to fundamentally change this Council.

Former Finance Chair Eddy Sarroff has promised a $30 million cut to the budget that he has already been mismanaging on a grand scale for years.  But, on these figures, Eddy’s $30 million promise won’t even touch the sides of this Council’s annual budget deficits.

Eddy clearly hasn’t understood the figures presented to him for the past 5 years and this alone, in my view, disqualifies him from running for Mayor.

As for Cr Young’s 10% rates cut promise, he’s in ‘Ron Clarke-style’ fantasy land given the Operations Budget deficits and debt problems facing this Council.

And, Susie Douglas, who recently posted a blog on her website saying Council’s finances were in ‘good shape’ shows an appalling lack of basic financial literacy.

Eddy Sarroff is the most culpable given he’s been the Chair of the Council’s powerful finance committee, during the time debt was being raised to fund the lavish lifestyle of this Council.

Councillors Young and Douglas also have played their part, voting for these budgets and never once raising a general business item to reign in the ballooning debt of this Council nor attempting to reform a Council that is out of control with its spending.

These three Councillors have had up to 17 years to do something but have failed.  Can we really trust them with another four years of financial mismanagement?

No candidate can talk rate rises, rate reductions or rate freezes without first talking council reform, restructure and massive cost cutting.

My plan is to reduce council’s eight directorates to just five: planning the city, building the city, managing the city, promoting the city and running the city.

My reform package is designed to save $80 Million a year but with the release of the latest council figures and estimates for 2012 and beyond, this is clearly not enough in future years.

Subsequent years will require greater cuts to get this Council’s budget back into the black. It will be hard but I have done it in business all my life and I know I can do it for this Council.

The trick to such a massive restructure is to ensure that basic council services to ratepayers and the city itself are not compromised. There is plenty of waste to cut that’s for sure.  It’s something I have done before in business and I know I can do for the City, if given the chance.

Until we reform this Council, until we fundamentally change the cost structure of running this city, we are forever doomed in a city wide debt trap.

My reform plan will begin the long road back into the financial black and back on track as a city but I will need your support on April 28^th to get the job done.

Tom Tate.

Growing up at boarding school can be tough, let me tell you. You had to stand up for yourself and be self motivated to get your school work done, get yourself ‘fed’ and ‘watered’ and generally get yourself where you needed to be each hour of the day. There was no mum or dad around 24/7 to help organise your life.

I made lifelong friends at boarding school and had great, more intensive family time in school holidays so it worked out well for me. It taught me to get up early because “first in is usually best dressed”.

It is probably the reason why I was the first candidate to announce my run for Mayor of the Gold Coast. It has given me a long time to communicate with voters and the plenty of time to get my name as well as my message and policies out into the hands of voters for their scrutiny.

My ‘truth campaign’ mailers pointing out the actual voting record of some of my mayoral competitors, has come in for some criticism of late. They have called it mudslinging, dirty, negative and grimy campaigning. Isn’t it interesting that no-one has called it inaccurate, incorrect or untrue!

In fact, no one has criticised the content at all…just that the sentiment is ‘negative’. I can live with that!

Most interesting of all, no answer has been forthcoming to the central question: “Why would you vote one way but say another in public about Allconnex?” The city hasn’t received an answer to that one as yet and I don’t expect one any time soon.

I think it is important that candidates, especially sitting Councillors, are held accountable for the votes they have taken, the decisions they have made and the positions they have held in the past. After all, aren’t these the best indicators of what they will do in the future?

My truth campaign simply outlines the facts and lets voters make up their own mind with the information clearly presented to them.

But the fact is that this mailer is but one of my five city wide mailers I have sent out. The other five? Yep – you guessed it, are policy driven announcements. Which one got all the press? The one ‘truth campaign’ mailer on Allconnex.

The ‘Truth about Allconnex’ mailer is all about the how mayoral front runner, sitting councillor, self proclaimed champion of the people and fighter of Allconnex, actually not only voted for the creation of Allconnex but seconded the motion. On top of that the mailer pointed to the additional 13 times he voted FOR Allconnex before the first bills started arriving in the letterbox.

I didn’t hide the fact that I sent the mailer – I put my name on every one of the 170,00 I mailed out to households. The Councillor named admitted that the mailer was factually correct to the media in the later media storm.

The latest attack angle on me actually has been that I lack “policy” and I am all “negative” in my campaigning approach. So I thought I would put pen to paper, or in this case fingers to keyboard, to point out how wrong this is.

What are the other fully thought out, fully costed policy items that have been part of my five other mailers?   Well try these on for size:

• A complete restructure of Council, reducing its eight directors to just five, saving at least $80 million dollars a year from the Council budget.
• Turning Bermuda St / Bundall Road into a clearway from Burleigh to Bundall with off-ramps, on-ramps and overpasses, creating a third central transport spine for the city.
• A properly funded policy to bring back the kerb side clean up across the city.
• Bringing an end to ratepayer funded overseas junkets for the Mayor, Councillors and staff, restricting travel to the economic development team within Council.
• Freezing the pay of the Mayor (hoping elected Councillors will follow the lead) while introducing a motion to freeze the salary and perks of the top 100 senior officers of Council.
• A full four-way, three level of government, PPP style funding model for a Guggenheim-style cultural centre and performing arts precinct that doesn’t hurt residents rates bill.
• An expansion of the public bus network by 100 new buses, more routes and more local stops, with the goal of 80% of residents being within a ten minute walk of public transport.
• Expanding the network of parks and sporting fields so that no kid is more than a 15 minute walk to a park where they can kick a ball, ride a bike or fly a kite.
• Expanding the safety camera network together with inviting businesses with compatible camera equipment to join the monitoring network.
• Arranging for free off peak bus travel for seniors across the city.
• Allowing seniors to keep the early discount while paying rates in monthly installments.
• Introducing time limited PIP Infrastructure charge reduction incentives to re-kick start the building and construction industry and job creation locally.
• Cancelling the Council HQ/Taj Mahal project and repaying the debt of $183 million dollars.

All the details of these policies can be found on my website, www.tom4mayor.com.au and include details on how they are going to be funded. You can also download copies of my five city wide mailers and see for yourself that the ‘truth campaign’ represents only a small fraction of my overall campaign to voters.

The other mayoral contenders have nothing more than a vague set of dot point lists as their policies. They are all hat and no cattle to use a good old bushy’s term. Thanks to my mother-in-law Marg for that line!

Some have even stolen their policy content from existing Council policy material. One candidate has a single webpage on his transport policy which actually includes a link to the Gold Coast City Council website where “more information” on ‘his’ policy can be obtained!

This is the sixth largest city in Australia and we have contenders for the top job running around without doing the most basic of policy homework on their own policies. The most stark contrast was the launch of my fully funded Cultural Centre policy a few weeks ago. I had produced a 9-page policy document outing the funding model I had devised. It can be found at www.tom4mayor.com.au.

However on its release in the media, all I got from the other contenders was: “You stole my idea for the name of the place: Guggenheim Gold Coast!”. Where is their funding model? Where is their plan? Where is their policy work?   Nowhere to be seen!

We have five weeks to go before polling day and while I have revealed a lot of my policy homework I have been doing over the past year and a half, I have a lot of policy still to reveal. But I won’t be stopping the truth campaign either – sitting Councillors standing for Mayor need to be accountable for the mess this city is in and their part in the votes that caused it!

Peter Young recently posted a blog on myGC bagging me out on my cultural centre plan.  His complaint seemed to boil down to the concept that he used the word ‘Guggenheim’ first and I should pay homage to this. Strangely he bags me for having a policy when his fellow council colleagues and mayoral candidates as well as himself fail to have a published policy on the cultural centre…

Peter’s attack on me seemed to be “playing the man and not the ball” so personal in fact that it warrants a personal response to Peter, point by point refuting the good Councillor…

1) I note your claim that you have been ‘publicly promoting this concept for quite some time. Well Peter, clearly its time you gave up as you have gotten nowhere!

The design that your Council project came up with reminds me of my uni days and specifically the engineering department of Sydney Uni. Its hopeless but what is worst, in all of this time you have not come up with a way to get the project funded without impacting on ratepayers. I have done that with my plan and is something you have failed to do in your 12 years in Council. So what exactly is the point of doing all the ‘promoting’ unless it is of course all about you just promoting yourself for Mayor?

2) I am really surprised to learn that you claim to be the inventor of the “Guggenheim” concept. How did you find the time while inventing the Internet, daily newspapers and the pasteurization process?

Peter, ideas are nothing unless you can implement them. My proposal is more about the sound funding model than a particular building design. You have a hopeless design for the Evandale site but won’t admit it. It is completely uninspiring and won’t attract a cent. Time to reboot the design process and get the funding without hurting ratepayers.

4) Your detailed vision doesn’t have a funding model and that is the key so beyond some scribbles on a a3 sheet of paper, what exactly have you achieved in your 12 years in Council for delivering such an iconic performance arts cultural centre?

5) Peter, you don’t have a copyright on the word “Guggenheim”.

If the people of the Gold Coast want evidence of your lack of a ‘Guggenheim’ worthy design, they only need to look at the building your Council design competition produced. I call it “office modern”.

6) I noticed that you have attacked me and not my ideas. So who exactly is “bereft of original ideas”?

7) You seem to have a unhealthily appetite for mentioning bikinis. Yes The Islander, a resort in Surfers Paradise, had bikini contests as well as all sorts of promotions over the years. That is what you do to run a successful tourism business. Something you have no experience in it seems. What a surprise our city is suffering citywide lack of promotion performance as well!

7) Peter, it was a GCB invention, putting a giant public artwork of a bikini-clad Meter Maid on my hotel by a graphic artist at the bully, not mine but I suppose your ‘truth and honesty’ campaign doesn’t extend to getting even these simple facts right. You have a history of making completely unfounded statements in public and never retracting them and I assume this time will be no different.

Surely after 12 years in public life you have learnt not to believe everything you read in the paper?

I never ever made the statement “I like to compare it to Leonardo’s Mona Lisa” so you need to retract that statement in your blog forthwith.

9) On your issue of “his appropriation of others’ ideas I would like to point out to you yet again Peter that the ‘Guggenheim’ museums and performing arts centers around the world ARE NOT YOUR IDEA ORIGINALLY – STOP CLAIMING THEY ARE.

10) You may contend that there is, in your words “great potential in him to damage the Gold Coast”. My only comment is that your potential is fully realised with you as a councillor in a city with the worst unemployment rate in our history, the highest number of business failures, the highest number of mortgage repossessions of family homes and the faster growing crime rate in the history of Queensland. This is on the back of the $1.4Billion dollar loss – the largest loss in Queensland municipal history! We have all seen you in action and the Gold Coast can’t afford another four years of you.

11) I love people like you Peter, who, when I disagree with them they say I don’t understand. In this case you say I don’t understand the complex hydraulic issues. Well Peter show me your civil engineering degree and I’ll show you mine. Oh, that’s right, you don’t have one. The lake was man made originally and we can ‘put it elsewhere on the site’ if it is needed at all now that the Hinze Dam has been doubled in capacity:- something I might add that you fought against back in 2003 but are now claiming credit for.

12) Peter, Gold Coasters have genuine concerns about your many trips to China not saving us from the economic downturn your planning, development and economic decisions have caused us in this city. They are genuinely concerned about the rising rates, rising water costs and the disappearing jobs while crime runs rampant. But yes, you mentioned the magic word ‘Guggenheim’ first back in what ever year. Smart fellow you are that you can even spell it.

13) You can’t have it every which way Peter: Either my plans are copied from you or my plans are blundering or my plans are brilliant but devised by the team of people I have built around me for my campaign. Which is it?

14) Ok, so Peter, if it is so important to you, I will admit that you used the word ‘ Guggenheim’ first. Now get out the way while I actually work to deliver just such a cultural centre that we can be proud of for our city.

And yes, this is the real Tom Tate answering.

P.S. I just did a search for ‘Guggenheim’ and ‘Peter Young’ and didn’t find you once on the massive Google search engine databases. Maybe I didn’t go back enough pages in the search. There IS a Peter Young who is exhibiting his art at one of the Guggenheim museums overseas. He says he was the first one to use the term ‘Peter Young’ and says he wants his name back from you! 

Eddy Sarroff finally threw his hat into the ring this week with a series of front-page stories and a media stunt out the front of Coomera Police station. He had five people from the Broadbeach neighborhood watch turn up for this campaign launch. It seems Fast Eddy has woken up to the crime problem on the Gold Coast.
 
His solution to crime? Everyone has to work together to solve crime. Brilliant! I wish I had through of that. We can call it CSI-Eddy.
 
Yep it’s time to put Cr Eddy Sarroff under some scrutiny for the first time in his political life. The back-flips, the media stunts, the populist positions and the endless whining without ever achieving anything needs to be exposed.
 
I checked out his campaign website. Two things struck me as funny right off the bat. The first one is the clipping from 1995 talking about Eddy taking a ‘zero tolerance to crime’. Yes 1995 – 17 years ago. Well Eddy – you haven’t exactly delivered on that promise! Need four more years huh?
 
Yes, crime and public safety is a huge issue here on the Gold Coast, however I’m not going to suggest that I have all the answers, or that Council is the lead agency in such a struggle. Policing is a State Government issue first and foremost and, while I applaud the Council funded part-time chopper, I don’t think ratepayers should be forking out for such state responsibilities yet again.
 
I do think Council has its part to play and my plan is for an expansion of the safety camera network to multiply the effect of the police we have on the ground now, while lobbying Brisbane for police to match the actual numbers of people sleeping on the Coast each night (i.e. including the tourists) not just the number of residents.
 
Council’s greatest role in the crime problem is urban renewal and economic development. Money and people are portable and years of slow approvals, ever rising rates, exorbitant fees and charges as well as inflexibility for business has done exactly that – sent people packing with their money. I intend to pursue a program of urban renewal driven by planning scheme incentives in such places as Palm Beach, Tugun, Chevron Island and Nerang among others.
 
In the past, our two major economic drivers in this city have been tourism and construction. We have emerging economic sectors of education, marine, medical and information technology. I intend to see these four sectors grow to be as important in our city as tourism and construction. I will be the deal making Mayor to bring the bigger firm’s headquarters to base on the Gold Coast. We have to make it attractive for existing businesses to grow locally while encouraging national and international businesses to base themselves here.

The second ‘funny’ on Fast Eddy’s website was the comment about his support for developers and business in the city. A great example of Cr Sarroff fighting major building projects around the city was his relentless opposition to the fantastic Main Place project opposite the Convention Centre late last year. I believe his delaying tactics, unreasonable conditions and demands, as well as actually voting against projects in the city have greatly contributed to our city now being known in many nationwide business circles as a ‘no go’ area for business investment. When I travel interstate on business, I receive considerable kudos for being able to run a successful business for such a long time on the Gold Coast under its oppressive Council fees and charges regime. It is not an accolade I should be receiving.
 
Councillor Eddy Sarroff fought with the help of his Councillor friend, and now fellow Mayoral Candidate Peter Young, for the introduction of the Priority Infrastructure Program (PIP) fees and charges regime. This was well before any other Council in Queensland. As it has turned out we were the only Council to do so comprehensively. Why do we wonder business has stopped dead here?
 
If Eddy ran for Mayor in 2007/08 he would never have put this ’support for developers’ on his website. Back then bashing developers and by association business was all the rage by Councillors such as Eddy. In fact many people tell me that Ron Clarke won his mayoral election on the back of the promise of a population cap. Well folks, we have now seen firsthand the economic downturn that a population cap would have caused us then. Eddy is now on the ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ band wagon after having spent most of his 17 years as a Councillor hurting our city’s economy.
 
Eddy as Finance Chair has achieved something however. He has delivered one of the greatest financial messes this Council has ever produced. What am I talking about? It’s all there on page 112 of Council’s Annual Report, sneakily published online over Christmas, withdrawn and republished a few days later.
 
In 2010, the city’s financial statement reveals a $15 million dollar net result – a surplus of income over expenditure. 2011 has not proved to be a good year for the Chairman of Finance, Cr Sarroff, with a whopping $1.4 billion dollar (yes billion with a ‘b’) deficit being reported.
 
That result is akin to telling every ratepayer in the city not to worry about paying rates for the next three years!
 
Now Fast Eddy will be ready for that one, claiming it is all to do with Allconnex. He won’t mention he was not only one of the Councillors who voted ‘for’ the creation of Allconnex back in February 2009, but actually seconded the motion!
 
Eddy did mention the ‘L’ word at his press conference: Leadership. He said he is the leader to fix the city. The 14 councillors who have been the closest colleagues of his, some working with him for the past four years, some for as many as 17 years, don’t agree. They simply don’t think he is leadership material nor should be leading this city.
 
How do I know?
 
Well for the past 17 years of Fast Eddy’s reign as Councillor for Broadbeach, not once has one of the sitting councillors nominated Eddy as Deputy Mayor, nor has Eddy himself been elected to that position. The option is open once a year formally and actually can be a motion raised from the floor of Council each week. That’s 884 times nobody has called on Eddy to take on the deputy mayor’s job. If the 14 people who work with him and know him the best don’t trust him in the role of Deputy Mayor of this city – why should the rest of the Gold Coast hire him as its Mayor?
 
Yes, I do have solutions for a lot of the problems discussed in this blog so have a look at my website: www.tom4mayor.com.au for all the details.

I launched my campaign just before Christmas as a free sausage sizzle at the Palm Beach Parklands. I gauged the success of the launch, not from the number of $300 seats I sold nor the number of $3000 tables I flogged off but by the number of snags we went through. Just on 450! And before any of my opponents accuse me of not possibly knowing how many snags were cooked and eaten by those attending, let me explain that it is a simply a formula that my mate, who does a lot of these charity BBQ’s, told me: its about 13 snags a kilo so that’s how I know!

While I cooked a lot of snags, it was great to walk around and talk to everybody who attended. While I knew a lot of the people there, the invite went out to everybody in the city so a lot of regular Gold Coasters I didn’t know turned up to size me up.

I got asked about public transport and what I was going to do about the lack of east-west connections. I was able to relate the ‘lack of east-west’ connections as a myth. It looks more to me like a spiders web when you look at the public transport system, especially our bus network. The problem is more about frequency not routes.

My answer is simple: I intend to double the kilometers covered in this city by Translink by 2016. Some new routes will be added but mostly we need higher frequency buses on almost all of the existing routes, especially in the southern and northern areas of the city. Higher frequency buses will also mean more opportunities for express services on some routes.

I am interested to know how the trial of the double decker bus is going. I will be happy to roll them out throughout the city on the high volume routes if they prove to be the solution that I think they will be.

A lot of people asked me about the Council HQ. I will be directing the CEO of Council to cancel the project to build a new Council HQ at Robina, which will reduce our city debt by $160 million they have already loaned for this project. This will be something I do the first day on the job as Mayor. The 14 elected Councillors can overturn my CEO directive but then they’ll have to answer to the community on such a rescission motion.

I am really doubtful that we need more space for more Council offices, but the devil is in the detail. Council needs to go on a diet. If it absolutely needs more space, the city can buy an existing building at a quarter of the price of what is proposed. There are plenty of cheap options around the city at the moment.

Kirra came up and as I mentioned to a person in the media a few months back “show me a plan that will continuously reverse the sand build up due to the tweed bypass project and I’ll sign”!  But it’s got to be a passive design that will not require more million’s pumped in every couple of years. I have reviewed a lot of proposed plans with my engineers hat on and am yet to be convinced we have found a good cost effective solution. But I am always willing to listen to anyone about returning Kirra to the surf and dive heaven it once was. 

While dredging Currumbin Creek was brought up (we were looking at it from the BBQ at the time), the Broadwater, especially south of Wavebreak, needs to have the priority for any dredging program. The city itself should own a couple of dredges instead of it being more contracted out external works. Council has got to get back to doing its core job rather than farming the work out to private enterprise. We have to stop delegating the core work and the blame when things go wrong. AllConnex showed us that our core council services should be retained in house.

The Cruise ship Terminal was mentioned but so was protecting The Spit in equal proportions. I am for a cruise ship terminal in the Broadwater however I think it should be placed on the Southport side, south of the Grand Hotel so that ship board guests have immediate access to Southport and Surfers.

We’ll have to do a massive dredge effort initially and maintenance dredging year round but it will be worth it and the docking fees can pay for it. I think we should leave The Spit for families, fisherman and surfers.  But a few more toilet blocks on The Spit will be installed under my mayoralty. Camp grounds and day trip facilities for wavebreak is a yes for me, but fifty storey hotels will be a “no” from me.

Many people asked about support for small business. The joke going around the BBQ is that is critical because council has turned so many big businesses into small ones now. I intend to eliminate infrastructure charges for any Gold Coast owned business moving from one location to another within the city. I will also be the deal making Mayor to bring the bigger firm headquarters to base on the Gold Coast. This is my prime experience area, more than any other candidate in the race. 

It surprised me how many people thought the police chopper was a good idea. However when I dug a little deeper with people it was a bit like thinking that free beer on a hot day was a good idea. Like me, everybody thought this should solely be a State police funding issue. Ratepayers should not be footing the bill for it.

The State have to stop cost shifting their responsibilities to the Council. No wonder the pressure on putting rates up is enormous. We have had to become a mini-State Government here on the Coast. What’s next? We have to build and maintain our own tank battalion for national defense? The State gets enough GST out of the Coast! I will be using my lobbying experience on CCIQ to get our fair share.

Everybody likes the idea of reforming council and especially keen on seeing a smaller Council. My solution of reducing Council’s eight directorates to just five, together with refocusing it on service, got a big tick from everyone I mentioned it to. Saving at least $80 Million a year seemed to me, from the feedback I was getting, to be too low an estimate. However, I would rather under promise and over deliver than the other way around!

The general consensus is that the Gold Coast is not looking for vision, it’s looking for certainty and confidence. Gold Coasters want to know that they will have a job next week, next month and next year. They also want to know that their family will be safe and the cost of living pressures they are facing will ease, eventually.

There is no silver bullet. A grand vision is not enough. While getting the Commonwealth Games is better than not getting them, only structural reform of our Council and our economy will achieve long term growth. Yep, those words sound grown up to me too but this is serious stuff and with a city that has a bigger municipal budget than all of Tasmania. The job is for serious grownups, with the runs on the board, who didn’t cut, quit and run from the tough decisions, who aren’t seeing the gig as just a better paying version of being a divisional councilor and is not for someone “in it for themselves”. 

I liked being able to give people at the launch an idea of where I am coming from, my background and my business experience. I genuinely want to do good for the Gold Coast. Unlike the other mayoral candidates, I don’t “need the job”, I “want to do it” for the city I love. I would do the job for a $1 a year but I don’t want to make this race about being well off.

Here’s my vision in a nutshell: “Deliver the Gold Coast certainty, confidence and a broader economy. I will want to rebuild our pride in our city, make it safer for every resident, make it easy to get around and return our city to being the best place to live, work and visit.”

Cheers     Tom

I am launching my campaign to become Mayor of the Gold Coast with a free sausage sizzle at the Palm Beach Parklands starting at 9.30am this Saturday morning.

Everyone is welcome and the snags are free! (Click on the map link at the end of this blog for the exact location).

I decided to launch my campaign in the south of the city because the south is so often ignored or forgotten. I intend to be a Mayor for the whole city, not just Surfers, Southport, Broadbeach or the Council Chambers at Bundall.

A community BBQ is also a little different compared to my fellow Mayoral Candidates who held $300-a-seat lavish luncheons or $150-a-person cocktail parties at a swish riverside mansion for the big end of town to launch their campaigns.

Yes, I want my launch to be different and I don’t want to be beholden to any donor.

That’s why my wife Ruth and I decided to fund my campaign ourselves. I have ruled out accepting big business or developer donations to my campaign.

What is the point of being a Mayor that can’t debate the critical projects in the city, or a Mayor that has to leave the room every 10 minutes for crucial votes? That’s not leadership!

It is essential that the Mayor, and for that matter, all Councillors must be able to vote for the best interest of the city and not be tied to donors or other conflict of interest concerns.

It is famously said that leadership is shown and decisions are made by those who turn up.

Leadership fails if the leader has to leave the room every 10 minutes. Our city needs better – it deserves better!

Is it any wonder that Gold Coast locals feel left out, angry and unrepresented when they have to spend such large amount of money to see a Mayoral Candidate launch their campaign?

I think my choice of a BBQ also sends another message to Council. It says that if elected, I will bring a new era of belt tightening to this organisation.

Oh and yeah, I like a BBQ sausage at the beach – what self-respecting Gold Coaster, Queenslander or Australian doesn’t!?

Tom

Recently Cr Peter Young announced his run for Mayor and a few days after his announcement he sent an mass email to most of the Christian pastors, ministers and church administrators across the Gold Coast.

In the letter he basically indicated he considered himself almost the ‘chosen one’ and had a crack at the other mayoral candidates with snide remarks and innuendo about Susie Douglas, David Power and myself specifically.

Cr Young’s email was an affront to, well just about everyone in the city.

In the email he tried to give the impression that God was on his side for this upcoming Mayoral campaign and as such all Godly persons should vote for him.

I read the correspondence Cr Young send to Christian church leaders in our city’s daily newspaper the following day and in a word I was disgusted.

What right does Cr Young have to call into question my personal faith, Christianity or connection with God?

I took note of Cr Young’s brash attempts at garnering publicity for himself and shameless promotion for his mayoral campaign during the Commonwealth Games announcement despite it being a citywide ‘residents’ win, not his personal triumph.

However I was genuinely shocked how Cr Young was campaigning based around saying God is on his side and all the other mayoral candidates including myself, are practically Godless and less than worthy to be candidates from solely a faith point of view.

My faith is a personal matter for myself and my family and I suspect that the vast majority of fellow Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and the countless other faiths represented in our city. I also think that a person’s faith should not be a consideration in a political campaign. However with Cr Young’s missive to churches this week, Cr Young has tried to do just that.

It is a fundamental tenant of our culture, our systems of Government and our Australian way of life that the Church and Government are kept separate. That Government, local, State or Federal, does not and should not push onto anyone, one particular faith at the exclusion of all others.

I don’t know Peter Young too well, but I am quickly forming the view that he is a divisive character if his email is anything to go by.

How does he think the citizens of other faiths feel now about the city in which they live? How does he think they feel if their faith doesn’t happen to marry with Cr Young’s if he was to become Mayor?

I can’t speak personally for my fellow mayoral candidates Keith Douglas, Dean Vegas, Susie Douglas, David Power nor potentially Eddie Sarroff, however none of us deserve to be politically ridiculed by Cr Young, given ‘his personal assessment’ of our individual levels of faith and piousness.

I have suggested to Cr Young in an email that he should stick to attacking me on my policies or on my past record.

I implored him to leave mine and everyone else’s personal faiths out of the equation as it simply is not right, simply not Australian and simply not a principled thing to do.

I asked Peter to reconsider his piece of communication to the churches, pastors and ministers, retract it, apologise for it to all the other candidates and to the city’s residents and never ever attempt to use his religion as a weapon for his campaign nor use anyone else’s faith against them in a political campaign again.

I am yet to even get an acknowledgement from Cr Young from my email. The above blog has been taken from the email I sent to Peter Young and I decided to publish it on my website and as many media outlets as I can.

Politics, government and religion should not mix and churches should not be used as part of a campaign strategy to ‘gain a certain voter demographic”. It’s just plain wrong.

The 2018 Commonwealth Games, to be held from April 4 to April 15, will be an incredible boost to the Gold Coast economy and infrastructure and have the potential to make this city world renowned.

Premier Anna Bligh, Mayor Ron Clarke, Bid Chairman Mark Stockwell and the bid team should be congratulated for their efforts and hard work and should be rightly proud of their achievements.

Our challenge now is to make the Commonwealth Games work for the Gold Coast by way of creating local jobs, building our infrastructure and growing our economy. It has been estimated that the Games could have the potential economic benefit of up to $2 billion and be responsible for the creation of more than 30,000 full-time equivalent jobs from 2015 to 2020.

Major dollars will need to be spent on infrastructure development – an estimated $400 million on sporting infrastructure, $500 million on transport infrastructure and $700 million on the Games Village. This is a long term investment for the Gold Coast city so it is imperative we get it right – not just for the Commonwealth Games, but also for the future benefit of the Gold Coast residents and visitors.

In addition to the considerable commitment in transport and sporting infrastructure, as a city we also need to take this opportunity to capitalise on other city building opportunities, promote new business investment options, redefine our brand and reputation and develop a great sense of community pride.

We’re back in the Game.

Either you are running for mayor or you’re not. This is a message for Mayoral phantom candidates Cr Eddie Sarroff and Cr Peter Young. What is it with these professional politicians? I have never read a book on leadership, nor heard a speech on leadership that included the phase, “sneaking around is ok”. Simply because it isn’t.

The undeclared mayoral candidates are just playing politics. Cr Sarroff, undeclared candidate and sitting councillor, is holding off his announcement under the assumption that until you actually declare you’re running then you can’t be attacked on your past deeds and on your performance record. Even the perennial Elvis Impersonator has been brave enough to put up his hand and declared he’s running. In the words of the King maybe fast Eddie should consider that it’s time for “A little less conversation, a little more action please”.

The other phantom mayoral candidate, Cr Young, is hoping that he will be able to claim the successful Commonwealth Games Bid was all due to him with trumpets playing and rose petals thrown before him as he walks the city to accept the accolades of a grateful populous. Good luck Peter climbing over the Anna Bligh, Ron Clarke and a plethora of other pollies also scrambling to take credit for that one.

Ron Clarke has his critics but you can’t call him a quitter. The long running fiasco with the water is a great case in point. There has been enormous pressure on Cr Clarke since the first water bills started arriving and he has stayed his course. When the public meetings were called, he didn’t hide, he went to them to speak only to be shouted down and abused. He got up the next morning and went again. Now I don’t agree with his promises from the last election, in which he beat me, nor do I agree with his current policies or his handling of the water debacle with the State Government, but you have got to admire his tenacity and the fact that he hasn’t quit. Cr Clarke outlasted Anna Bligh and she blinked and the great water rip off has finally been sheeted home to its original cause – the State Government water privatisation madness.

All the other mayoral candidates talk a lot about “reigning in the bureaucracy”. Well here is a news flash for all the former and sitting Councillors who are now ‘contemplating’ a run for Mayor: You had between 12 and 17 years as a Councillors to do something about the “bureaucracy” and you haven’t. Staff numbers went up each year during your collective tenures. You where there as new departments were added to the Council’s organisation and you where there as the staff numbers increased and external consultants use ballooned.

The comparison was drawn by one mayoral candidate that leading Council will be different to ‘business’ and that the Mayor won’t be able to sit there and dictate terms to experienced Councillors like in a board meeting. In my business experience the customers actually do the dictating and ignoring them is a sure recipe to go broke. Same for Council. If the elected representatives, including the Mayor, ignore the wishes of the majority of residents then it they do so at their peril. I firmly believe that Council needs some business heads in there leading the show. Some of the existing Councillors are from business backgrounds however a lot are not.

We need business people who know how to treat ratepayers and residents as customers, attract investment, and do the necessary deals to get more business to our city and how to control costs to the cent. This city certainly doesn’t need more professional politicians that are looking just for a cushy seat for their behind to land on and our city certainly doesn’t need any more quitters!