Last week's Guest Speaker: Mayor Tom Tate
Posted by Franz Huber on Nov 19, 2016
The temptation to quote stacks of statistics is hard to resist. As Mayor in charge of a city with an annual budget of over 1.3 Billion dollars (the second highest in Australia), Mayor Tom Tate would have plenty of things to crow about. I leave the stats to Wikipedia, and the revelation of publicly available stuff to the Mayor's Facebook page. OK, perhaps just a little bit: born in Vientiane, Laos, he entered Scots College in Sydney as an 11 year old. Like most boys, in order to "get out of studying, I subscribed to the Boxing Class", he said. In the first lesson, they tied the gloves on, but omitted to tell him that "boxing" in one of the top Sydney schools had no relevance to Thai Boxing... In those days, the resulting damage to his opponent's self esteem resulted in him being given a note to present to the head master. Thinking that he was about to be congratulated on his victory over a much heavier opponent, this instead was to collect a caning for not adhering to the Marquess of Queensberry rules... And it would appear that Tom's (may I call you by your first name, Your Worship?) career had much to do with a very positive attitude to win. "Right place, right time" is one of his mottoes. First elected in 2012, he found that there were just 2 cranes on the Gold Coast horizon, both on the (Queensland Government) Griffith Uni / Hospital project. "Tourism, Education and Construction is our core", Tom declared. Thus, he instigated not just the sacking of of the council's Chair of Planning, but also declared that there would be no Infrastructure Levies for the next 6 months. Vigorous lobbying of Chinese and Japanese developers brought up projects such as $1 Billion Jewels project after the much maligned Broadwater Wave Break Island Casino project got knocked back. Following Jewels is the announcement by Chairman Xin Wang of the Hong Kong based Forise Holdings of a 88 storey tower on the former Iluka site, topping Q1 as the tallest building. [It is the policy of Rotary, and of your Editor, to remain non-political, so no further comment. Ed.]
Other major endeavors are in the sector of Education. "Students are Tourists", Tom declared. "So, we cooperate with this 1.5 Billion Industry by facilitating their efforts with our Tourism Industry and Tourism Authorities".
And what will happen after the Commonwealth Games? "The 'Village' will be converted to a specialized medical industry precinct, manufacturing body parts" Tom enthused. And with the extension of the Light Rail to Helensvale, at a cost of some $55 Million to the Council (this is 17% of total cost), the ongoing expansion of the Gold Coast is not going to stop. "Our Town Plan is to promote 'going upwards instead of sprawling out" he said. This would explain why we can expect a substantial relaxation of the 3 stories limit, which apparently was originally set because that is the height of the trees...
Any politician who makes things happen, will always have opponents, usually more than one who doesn't. But, in 2016, Tom was elected with a majority of 73% of the two-candidate vote. This would indicate that our Mayor indeed has the backing of the bulk of the population.
Photo above: President Simon Brook presents a vote of thanks.