TATE TOWN: Tom Tate and Tozer's very big week

It has been a busy week for Australia’s most “colourful” politician, Gold Coast City Mayor Tom Tate, the subject of this publication’s close to ten-year-long, detailed “Tate Town” investigation.

First, Tate tried to recoup $441,000 from the Gold Coast Council he heads for a failed defamation action he launched against the ABC and a fellow councillor. Then, when news broke in the media, he changed his claim to just $100. Why he made this bizarre move is unclear, but the Council nevertheless unanimously decided to decline it on Tuesday (2 December). Unanimously, that is, apart from one councillor, Glenn Tozer. As it happens, IA spoke to Councillor Tozer earlier on Tuesday outside Council Chambers. The interview, which we filmed, was… interesting.

Also, over the last week, Tom Tate defended his decision to travel to Italy, at ratepayers' expense, to be a torchbearer at the 2026 Winter Olympics. His decision was not only criticised because the Gold Coast is not known to be a hub of winter sport, but also because he has spent $103,957 on international travel over the last financial year.

Only one other Councillor travelled overseas last financial year, jetting off to California and London, at a cost to Gold Coast residents of $18,914 — Glenn Tozer.

(We’ll show our interview with Tozer, discuss its circumstances and reveal more about Councillor Tozer later in this article.)

Thirdly, Mayor Tate suffered a humiliating defeat when an obscure judicial officer called the Body Corporate Adjudicator overturned his own interim injunction in Tate's favour. As readers of the Tate Town investigation on this publication would be aware, through his “Crackerjack” style acquisition of the community-owned Surfers Paradise Bowls Club, Tate acquired a floor of an adjacent apartment block, the Surfers Plaza Resort.

In 2023, he attempted to turn this floor, via a Guatemalan business associate, into “pods” accommodation, providing budget accommodation for 270 backpackers in a building containing only 146 units. This radical change was initially declined by the Council, but later approved after the Mayor’s associate appealed the decision to the Planning and Environment Court.

(The troubling, if not scandalous, circumstances of how this approval came about will be discussed in a subsequent Independent Australia article to be published in the next few days. As will many other issues relating to the Surfers Plaza Resort connected to Tom Tate, which involve matters of significant concern and, indeed, alleged criminality. Keep watching Tate Town updates, shown on the right-hand corner of the IA homepage.)

Regarding the Adjudicator’s decision, Tate and his associate, Alfonso Abril, had appealed a decision by the Resort Corporate of the Surfers Plaza Resort to increase their share of the expenses after the pods business had left the building, virtually uninsurable. Not only virtually uninsurable, but in fact actually uninsured for 17 days in July 2024 — a massive risk for other residents. Eventually, after that desperate time, the body corporate was able to secure Lloyds of London as an insurer of last resort, but only after the annual premium had increased from $71,708 a year to $704,727 — an increase of 883%.

Both Tate and Abril complained about the severity of the increase, which would have involved them needing to pay 64% of the updated premium, on the basis they couldn’t afford it. Abril claimed it would put his “Tequila Sunrise” pods business out of business, and Tate claimed the increase in costs would therefore leave him without a tenant and cause significant financial damage to him.

In overturning his interim injunction, Adjudicator Ron Miskinis said that since Abril was merely the lessee operating the business, his concerns about the damage to his profitability were irrelevant to his decision. Irrelevant, since the responsibility for the added costs to other body corporate owners was the sole responsibility of the owner of the unit who had granted Alfonso Abril the lease to operate his pods business: Mayor Tom Tate.

Adjudicator Miskinis then turned his attention to Tate’s claim about the financial harm an adverse decision would cause him:

I am also advised that the Applicants failed to provide evidence of the First Applicant’s financial status, despite the First Applicant having recently purchased an adjacent property for over $4.1 million without a mortgage.

This suggests the owner had the means to pay the contribution on an interim basis.

The Mayor and his associate, Abril, have since instigated legal action to appeal this decision. More details about that in subsequent “Tate Town” updates on the murky goings on at the Surfer Plaza Resort, which will be published on IA soon.

The last key take from Tom Tate’s eventful week was the approval by the Council to spend $1.1 million of ratepayers’ money to further evaluate the feasibility of building a Cableway into the World Heritage-listed Springbrook National Park in the City’s hinterland. This proposal was approved by Council on Tuesday, seemingly Tate’s sole victory in an otherwise humiliating week.

There are many things we could say about this proposal, but since we have already done so exhaustively this year in various “Tate Town” articles, culminating in a detailed 16-minute documentary released a few months ago, we will merely say it is unfeasible.

We know this because the proposal has been examined exhaustively in the four previous attempts to get it off the ground over the last 30 years and was rejected every time. Hence, the Council’s approval of it on Tuesday would appear to be a pointless, flagrant waste of Gold Coast ratepayers’ money.

As it happens, IA was at a rather small rally on Tuesday morning at the Council Chambers, organised by local environmental group Gecko. They had conducted a much larger rally a few months earlier, where they were locked out of the Council building, which we also reported on HERE, but this one was more focused.

As it turned out, City Councillor Glenn Tozer came down to chat to concerned local citizens and certain media at this rally, the only Councillor who did. For this, he should be applauded.

Independent Australia took the opportunity to ask Tozer some questions about the Cableway and a few other matters. It was an arguably rancorous and somewhat bewildering exchange, though not to anywhere near the same extent as this publication’s famous “Chicken Dance” interview with local state MP and former Gold Coast Mayor Ray Stevens on the same topic in 2016.

You can view the IA interview with Tozer below, in which IA provides additional commentary.

One detail in this interview deserves special explanation, however.

IA asked Tozer why the Council was even considering this proposal and planning to spend more ratepayers’ money after it had been rejected every time before. He said he had voted against "in most instances" (though not in all cases!) and this is doubtless true. But it should be noted that he is a politician and his electoral district encompasses the Springbrook area. Naturally, this tourist development would be unpopular with electors in his district, so this is hardly a sign of great virtue.

What should also be noted – as IA alluded to in the interview – is that Tozer, in his more than decade-long stint as Councillor so far, almost always votes in favour of Tom Tate’s proposals. Just as he did this week in the matter of Tate’s defamation action.

But Tozer is far from the only one who yields to Tate on nearly every front. Practically the entire Gold Coast Council does the same. And this is one of the reasons the Gold Coast is in such a desperately undemocratic state and is arguably the centre of corruption in Australia as a whole. Which is why Independent Australia uses its scarce resources to investigate, so exhaustively, Tom Tate and his colourful Town.

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