SPOOK CITY
THE biggest lesson from the Commonwealth Games is how locals can be scared off.
Is the Gold Coast just tinsel and less community minded? Or are we cashed up, can run when the tourists hit town?
This is one of the conversations the city must have post-Games if millions of taxpayer dollars are to be spent on an annual festival and major sporting events as a legacy.
What is the point if residents living in tourist hot spots take off to Kingscliff or interstate. Was it just the negative publicity about the Games transport plan?
The trigger was pulled much earlier. Let’s go back to November 12, 2011, at the Broadwater Parklands.
The community cheered as a screen showed then-Premier Anna Bligh and the late Ron Clarke winning the Games bid. As a council insider explains, politics quickly intervened. Dreams of us all riding a smooth wave into Surfers Paradise began to be lost.
“There was such an excitement about it. Then what happened, there was all this negativity about the Games,” the insider says.
The Newman Government sacked Labor’s appointment of Mark Stockwell as GOLDOC chair. A citywide health plan was dropped. A legacy committee disbanded.
When organisers advertised for 15,000 volunteers, they received 47,000 applications. Positive publicity but hidden was a cloud hovering over locals.
How will I get to Southport to work? I’m going to tell my clients my ute won’t get on the M1. I’m getting out of here.
“It (the volunteers) indicated people wanted to be involved but they (the residents) weren’t taken on that journey,” the council source says.
Concerns surfaced about promotion of free public events like the baton relay and Festival 2018. Councillors sent staff out to schools to rally last-minute support.
Main Beach Association secretary Georgie Brown could see her 200-unit apartment block empty. Semiprofessional retirees were off to Coolangatta airport.
“We had to put up with Indy and people said why bother and they went for a holiday,” she says. “The message should have been ‘come and embrace it, it will be fun’ but ended up it’s going to be difficult and not very nice to be around. There was no mention about the concerts.”
In Surfers Paradise, unit owner and body corporate lobbyist George Friend witnessed what happens every year with Schoolies. “People get out of town. It’s been like that for a long time,” he says.
The turning point was two years ago, after pollies returned from Glasgow and first publicly voiced their concerns about traffic congestion, he says.
“They didn’t want the same problem. They didn’t look at it broadly enough.”
Birmingham’s council is putting together its report card on the Gold Coast and how to stage the next Commonwealth Games. What do they do first?
Put aside petty politics like removing organisers and budget-cutting potential legacy winners. Focus instead on maintaining your pedestrian traffic between venues and local businesses.
The Gold Coast started on the same wave with a smile headed towards Surfers but we lost many in the wash. All because we looked back at what was only the possibility of a storm on the horizon.