In her own words: pastor sue baynes on ...

THE Gold Coast City Council has declined several requests for adviser Sue Baynes to give an extended interview since her appointment as a City employee.

However, as a pastor and former political candidate, Ms Baynes has built a strong public profile. Here are her views on issues ranging from same sex marriage, Tom and Ruth Tate and HOTA.

On her early working relationship with Tom Tate:

“He will ring me, he will text me, he will email me and he will ask me for counsel. ‘Can we talk about this?’ And I would go into meetings with him, we would have regular times where I go into his office and I just say: ‘What do you want to talk about?’ And he would just start talking, he needed someone to bounce things off.”

On Ruth Tate recovering from a heart attack, when speaking at a church meeting:

“We’ve just heard Tom, our Mayor, share about his treading in Singapore airport, in the hospital, in the motel, in the days he was by himself in a different land, where he had to tread to claim what was his. Rightfully his, was his wife, not just coming back and being 10 per cent right, but coming back and being 100 per cent, 100 per cent healed, 100 per cent whole.”

As a Family First candidate in 2016 speaking about a safe schools program that aimed to protect the bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender:

“The content is not age appropriate.”

On marriage equality in 2016: “We want to keep the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.”

On the cruise ship terminal and Coast development (again 2016):

“I support it as long as it passes the environmental studies. A lot of new developments are positive for the Coast.”

On HOTA and the “demonic stronghold”: “I said, ‘we can deal with that’, and Tom said to me: ‘Actually, Sue, we’re building a new bridge and it’s actually going to go from HOTA over the river to the other side’.

“He said to me, ‘why don’t we pray and dedicate that new bridge to the Lord to create a new gateway?’ I’m like, ‘I like this man more and more’. That is awesome, that is the strategy.”

On learning in 2007 about the evangelical theory 7M or the Seven Mountain Mandate:

“I want to know the answers to how we bring not just change, not just revivals (but). How do we bring change that is sustained, it stays in our society and it doesn’t wane or take another form. It just hit me so strongly and I got it, I got passionate about exploring what that would mean and how we could bring that to our city and our nation. Praise God for people in government who hear the voice of God and are willing to be obedient to what the voice of God says to them, whatever level of government it may be, whether it’s federal, state or local levels.”

On her assignment from God:

“This is really important to understand that when you have an assignment from the King, that assignment might be overt or it might be covert. Overt means it’s really obvious, you’re out there, you’ve got a position of power maybe, and you’re very visible. Other times God leads you to something that’s quite covert, it’s under the radar, it’s a little bit hidden. And for me that’s been my story with Tom, except that the media got a hold of stuff that was happening – we had the privilege of baptising the Mayor last year and I had no idea how viral that video had gone until people kept coming up to me and saying, ‘I’ve seen your face before, you’re the lady who baptised the Mayor’.”