UNCHAIN OUR CITY DREAMS

IN an age of innovation and imagination, we have a State Government in its own age of closed-minded denial.

When it comes to the Gold Coast, the Brisbane-centric Government sees innovation and vision as bywords for trouble. It runs a mile at the hint of any idea from the tourism capital that’s big and might not fit its own view of the world.

This might suit the lowest-commondenominator policies of a government that is close to the militant unions and failed ideologies, but it hurts the people of the state’s second largest city who have had to build the Gold Coast on their own, without the mega-millions of dollars governments have invested in their public service and the city that is its power base. Incredibly though, the Government will pilfer our ideas to benefit its own back yard.

Gold Coasters recall it was a Peter Beattie-led government that sank the cruise ship terminal on the eve of the 2006 election. How could we forget? Instead of the terminal having been completed by now, it remains an ongoing drama at local and state government levels, dragged up each election for debate and leading to a process that is supposed to produce a masterplan for the Spit and Broadwater.

When we say masterplan, we fear it will be something else – a plan, yes, but one pre-determined by this Government and its cardigan-clad senior bureaucrats. In an act of daylight robbery, they nicked the right of all Gold Coasters to have a direct say in the future of this precious resource, despite assurances of consultation.

By decreeing no development north of Sea World, the Premier nobbled any chance of a rethink of all the amazing possibilities. No one wants wall-to-wall towers north of Sea World, but to declare any development off limits was farcical.

Having put up a roadblock to such a major project on the Gold Coast, the Government has handed Brisbane its chance to steal the Gold Coast’s cruise industry dream by building its own terminal on the muddy Brisbane River.

The list of obstacles to innovation and infrastructure goes on, as does Brisbane’s penchant for purloining our ideas. The Government has set itself on course to fragment the film industry by ploughing $12 million into turning old warehouses in an industrial wasteland in Brisbane into film studios, ignoring the facilities and talent already developed on the Gold Coast.

It refuses to relocate relevant government departments to the Gold Coast. It ignores the inferior service on the Gold Coast rail line, which remains stuck at Varsity Lakes when it should have gone through to the airport a decade ago.

It allowed Stadiums Queensland to hand our NRL and AFL franchises a raw deal for years. It grabbed an entire NRL round for Brisbane next year, without including the Gold Coast or organising for the Titans to play at home. But the contemptuous treatment of the Gold Coast was best illustrated in the way it had to be embarrassed into funding something as small as a school crossing at Pimpama, which only came after a child was knocked.

We’re not being churlish. The Gold Coast has earned respect and demands a fair go from this Government. Unlock the chains and allow ideas to flow.