Letter of the Week
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THE community is indebted to the
Gold Coast Bulletin for revealing disturbing information on the cruise ship terminal that has been hidden from ratepayers (‘Titanic risk’, GCB, 16/05/18).
First, congratulations for your determination in eventually obtaining the report – a year after it should have been released to the public. Secondly, the paper has done a great job in exposing the pattern of secrecy that unfortunately typifies the behaviour of this council – and other levels of government.
And, best of all, well done for having the courage to admit that the Bulletin had erred when it originally supported the proposal to build an oceanside cruise ship terminal at The Spit. SUE DONOVAN, MAIN BEACH
THANK you Gold Coast Bulletin for exposing what it was that the Gold Coast City Council sought to not disclose to the public relative to a cruise ship terminal being built here on the Gold Coast. It has always been a dud proposal! GEORGE HANNAFORD, HELENSVALE
THE blistering attack by member for Surfers Paradise John-Paul Langbroek on his own constituents in parliament are both curious and insulting, and they indicate a lack of appreciation of the reasons for the community opposition by Surfers Paradise businesses and residents to the council’s ill-considered decision to sell the Surfers Paradise Transit Centre and Bruce Bishop car park.
Curious because until now he has supported the opposition by Save Surfers Paradise to the council’s decision. Indeed, his website ran a petition to gauge community views about this decision and according to him “hundreds” of people signed the petition opposing the sale. Also, Mr Langbroek has gone on the public record supporting Save Surfers Paradise and expressing his strong opposition to the sale.
Insulting because he suggests, behind the cowardly cover of parliamentary privilege, that Save Surfers Paradise has acted improperly, that it has no proper basis for opposing the decision and that it has behaved improperly in the making of a complaint to the Crime and Corruption Commission about the facts and circumstances surrounding the council’s sale decision and the actions of Mayor Tate.
Mr Langbroek knows the facts: not every complaint to the CCC gets a guernsey. It is only those complaints to the Crime and Corruption Commission that provide sufficient evidence to establish a reasonable suspicion of corrupt conduct that the CCC decides to investigate.
The only CCC complaint that Save Surfers Paradise has commented on publicly is a complaint that has been accepted by the CCC as meeting that threshold test. It met that test because of the weight of the documentary evidence provided to support the complaint – evidence that came from the council’s own records and communications.
Save Surfers Paradise has reported other matters to the CCC but it has not made any public comment on them to date. Public comment will only follow if the CCC determines
that there is sufficient evidence to satisfy its threshold test to raise a reasonable suspicion that corrupt conduct has been engaged in. It then becomes a clear issue of public interest.
Furthermore, in our reporting of the complaint that the CCC is investigating, Save Surfers Paradise has consistently and properly qualified its commentary by stating very clearly that the complaint is under investigation and that the parties named in it, Mayor Tate and CEO Dickson, are to be presumed innocent until allegations of wrongdoing are proven.
Again, we return to the curious nature of Mr Langbroek’s comments: perhaps they can be explained by the fact that they were made during a debate about the banning of developer donations to political candidates, a move that we understand that his and Mayor Tate’s political party strongly opposes, for obvious reasons.
That is their democratic right, of course, just as it is the democratic right of the Surfers Paradise business and residential community to oppose the ill-considered council decision to sell the valuable community asset that is the Bruce Bishop car park, and just as it is the right of members of the community to make complaints where they suspect that corrupt conduct has taken place, and just as it is the right of the media in an open and democratic society to report responsibly on those matters, as the Gold Coast
Bulletin has done.
DEBORAH KELLY
SAVE SURFERS PARADISE INC.