EXCLUSIVE SUMMARY: Tom Tate and his Baker's pods collapse GC democracy

Despite the Gold Coast City Council twice voting to reject a development proposal endorsed by his administration, Gold Coast Council CEO Tim Baker unilaterally overturned that democratic decision, directly advantaging Mayor Tom Tate.

CEO Baker was personally appointed by Tate after the Mayor’s previous handpicked CEO, David Edwards, was forced to resign under a corruption cloud after just six weeks.

As Independent Australia has revealed, Baker has been key to Tate acquiring the final portion of the Surfers Paradise Bowls Club, which he sold to Chinese Developers, as IA also revealed, for $33 million gross – or $25 million net – personal profit to the Mayor.

In December 2023, CEO Tim Baker, using authority delegated to him, pushed through a development proposal that had been not only rejected twice by the elected Councillors, but should never have been put before them in the first place. Tate's pods development having never gained legal approval from other owners in the Surfers Plaza Resort.

Independent Australia is not alleging that Gold Coast CEO Tim Baker is corrupt or was deliberately advantaging Mayor Tom Tate, as it is possible both he and the Council administration he oversees may simply be incompetent or negligent.

Certainly, the adherence to commonly accepted democratic standards has been utterly neglected under both the Mayor and his handpicked bureaucrat. Independent Australia strongly recommends, as many have suggested, that the Queensland anti-corruption authority, the CCC, commence an investigation into the activities of Tate, Baker and the Gold Coast Council at the earliest time.

Independent Australia will provide a full dossier of our findings to such a body, but in terms of this particular matter, we refer to the attached article below for the full and damning claims against Mayor Tate, his CEO and his downtrodden administration.

EXCLUSIVE: GC CEO secretly pushes through Tate development twice rejected by Council

A development twice rejected by elected councillors was quietly resurrected through bureaucracy, sealed documents and backroom processes that consistently favoured the Gold Coast’s Mayor over the public interest.

This will reveal, with full sources and documentation, details of the following:

Mayor Tom Tate's pods development application was never properly endorsed by the Surfers Plaza Resort and should never have been put before Council.
The Gold Coast Council Administration defied its own City Plan in recommending the Mayor’s development to the Council, who voted to reject it anyway — twice.
Council CEO Tim Baker defied the Council’s twice-voted-upon resolutions to reject the Mayor’s scheme by unilaterally overturning their democratic will and personally approving it.
The Mayor, the CEO and his administration have never reported back to Council on how the development got approved and have refused to answer any questions or provide any clarification to this publication about this matter.

Democracy would appear to be broken on the Gold Coast. Bureaucrats personally appointed by Tate now seem willing and able to overturn the will of the people’s representatives with such impunity that they don’t even report back to Council to explain why they did.

Mayor Tate has just announced his candidacy for a fifth term. This could be the death knell for democracy and justice in Australia’s sixth-largest city. As Independent Australia has forensically explained in around 20 detailed investigative stories over almost a decade, all freely available to this day in “Tate Town”, the Mayor is corrupt.

More disturbing still, IA has given its categorical evidence to virtually every relevant authority with any jurisdiction in this matter, such as Queensland and NSW State Police, the AFP, the ATO, ASIC, APRA, the CCC and even the bankruptcy trustee. But we have been summarily ignored. It is disconcerting. The Fitzgerald Inquiry rooted much of this rot out in the dark days of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, or so we thought. Perhaps it never really went away. It does seem that way.

We recommend you read the latest story and then read all the previous Tate Town investigative articles. After that, we suggest you get rightfully outraged and then contact your elected representatives, local, State and/or Federal, and demand action.

And don't vote for Tom Tate next year.

READ THE FULL REPORT OF THIS INVESTIGATION HERE.

Follow IA founder Dave Donovan on X/Twitter @davrosz and Bluesky @davrosz.bsky.social, Independent Australia on Bluesky @independentaus.bsky.social, X/Twitter @independentaus and Facebook HERE.