Step aside, I have a Tate with destiny
Heavy rail to airport ‘commonsense’: candidate
THE Gold Coast’s newest mayoral candidate has called on fellow challengers to abandon their tilt at the top job so he can take on Mayor Tom Tate himself.
Serial candidate Gary Pead is the fifth person to announce a run for the mayoralty ahead of next month’s council election on March 28.
At the last mayoral election he missed the deadline to nominate because he was giving a TV interview, but he now says Brett Lambert, Mona Hecke and Virgina Freebody must withdraw from their campaigns in deference to his “experience”.
“I will be calling for the other mayoral candidates so far, to withdraw from the nomination in favour of my long-term experience and ask them to stand as councillors as the Coast needs the backup of good people to replace the existing councillors,” he said.
“My first action when elected will be to move to declare the Gold Coast city under a state of climate emergency and will create an emissions-lowering city and take on the finance industry for my affordable housing project. I will attempt in a very short time to clean up local council politics across all of Queensland.”
Mr Pead, a former Labor Party member who contested the state seat of Mermaid Beach in 2015, later ran as an independent at the 2016 federal election in the southern Gold Coast seat of McPherson. He ran again in Mermaid Beach in 2017, receiving 305 votes.
Mr Pead said he was passionate about multiple issues including climate change, housing affordability, the environment and opposing the controversial Adani mine.
The candidate declared he wanted to form an alliance of mayoral and council candidates called “People before Profit Gouging” in a bid to solve what he believes are the biggest issues facing local government, with plans to contest the state election in October.
He said the alliance would be “an attempt to change the failed politics of the past 30 years in Australia in favour of genuine community candidates, not party-political sycophants and self-interested political career candidates”.
Nominations open tomorrow and close on March 3.
A SECOND mayoral candidate has called for the rollout of the Gold Coast light rail network to be paused.
Virginia Freebody cited “common sense” and high costs as a reason to put a stop to expanding the tram lines down to Coolangatta.
She joins fellow candidate Mona Hecke in calling for the tram network to be “paused”.
Speaking at a Mayoral debate yesterday, Ms Freebody said she planned to advocate pushing heavy rail down to Gold Coast Airport instead.
“I just think commonsense is the biggest thing,” she said.
“The light rail at the moment is impacting our roads and congestion. I’m not saying not forever, just not at this time, not until we get our roads sorted.”
Gold Coast Mayor Tom
Tate is in favour of expanding the light rail, and is campaigning to take it through to the airport.
Outside the meeting, Ms Hecke said: “I deliberately omitted speaking about the light rail this morning because people keep pressing me for a simple yes or no on whether I will support Stage 3B heading south from Burleigh Heads.”
“Transport planning and infrastructure delivery is complex. To speak of singular issues ignores the broader context and considerations,” she said.
“Since 2015, I have been advocating to fast-track heavy rail to Coolangatta.
“It’s the linchpin in our entire transport system.
“I have also been pushing for east-west public transport links.”