GC CEO secretively pushes through Tate pods development twice rejected by Council
A development financially benefitting Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate and twice rejected by elected councillors, was quietly resurrected through bureaucracy, sealed documents and backroom deals that consistently favoured Tate and ran roughshod over the public interest.
The next sensational chapter in David Donovan’s epic ‘Tate Town’ corruption investigation.
READ A SUMMARY OF THIS REPORT HERE.
IN JUNE 2022, the Gold Coast Council, to the great surprise of many, sold the last piece of the Surfers Paradise Bowls Club greens not owned by Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate to Michael Turner, a respectable local businessman.
Two months later, on 31 August 2022, Tom Tate’s tenant on Floor Two of the Surfers Plaza Resort, Alfonso Abril, received the following planning application approval under the seal of the Surfers Plaza Resort Body Corporate:
The planning application was to build a high-density “pods” backpacker hostel on the Tate-owned floor of that 15-storey building. So high density, indeed, that it was to add 270 beds to a building that otherwise only accommodated 200 beds on the other 13 occupied floors.
Independent Australia can reveal, despite this document being provided to the Council to enable this planning application, that the owners of Surfers Plaza Resort never provided their consent to this massive change to the usage and amenity of their building and, as such, caused a massive financial loss for owners other than the Mayor.
Under s225 of the Body Corporate and Community Management (Accommodation Module) Regulation 2020, the Body Corporate seal should only be used as directed by the Body Corporate. A resolution of the Body Corporate can only be achieved by a majority vote of owners at an Annual General Meeting or Extraordinary General Meeting of the Body Corporate.
In fact, the Body Corporate Committee chair and secretary signed the approval for the development without referring the matter to owners for a vote, or even informing them. They then affixed the registered seal of the Surfers Plaza Resort Body Corporate to the signed document and provided it to the Gold Coast City Council as proof that owners had approved Tate’s pods development. Without such approval, the development would never have been even considered by Councillors.
Independent Australia asked the Body Corporate Committee to explain how this allegedly fraudulent document was provided to the Council, but they have neglected to provide any information.
This ostensible approval by owners was provided in the Council administration’s very strong recommendation to Councillors to vote to approve the Mayor’s personal development. Tate recused himself from any votes on the matter due to his obvious conflict of interest.
However, despite the Council Administration’s enthusiastic endorsement and the apparent approval of Surfers Plaza Resort owners, the development was rejected by an overwhelming majority of both the Planning Committee (on 13 July 2023, by 8-1) and the full sitting Council (25 July 2023, 8-4) .
Councillors, led most vocally by Peter Young, noted that the proposal ran radically counter to the Gold Coast City Plan in two main areas: accommodation density and provision of adequate car parking for residents (#1 and #2 below).
In documents provided to Councillors as an aid to their deliberations, bureaucrats admitted the development was in severe breach of the Gold Coast City Plan in terms of density and parking, yet recommended that Councillors approve the Mayor’s development anyway.
Building density per bed
The proposal entailed adding 270 beds to one floor of a 15-storey building, otherwise containing only 200 bedrooms. The City Plan allows a maximum density of 13m2 per bed. The Tate application increased the density for the entire building to an incredible 6m2 per bed (see below):
Notably, the Council Administration added a more favourable-looking (at a glance) density number of 10.6m2 to its recommendation. The number perplexingly showed the density per bed of the entire building if all the other 200 pre-existing residents moved out and only the 270 pods were in the Resort.
On the other hand, the Administration did not provide to Councillors the density per bed for the 270 beds proposed for Tate’s single floor (less than 2m2), so outside the parameters of the City Plan, which would be absurd.
Based on density, it is therefore reasonable to ask whether the Council Administration was actively attempting to mislead elected Councillors to produce an outcome which would serve to directly financially benefit the City Mayor at the expense of other ratepayers. Or, in other words, corruption. The only other reasonable conclusion – arguably just as concerning – is that Gold Coast City officials are staggeringly incompetent and/or negligent.
No car parks
On18 November 2021, interim Gold Coast City CEO Joe McCabe used his delegated authority to alter a development condition in place since 1987 to allow Surfers Plaza Resort residents to park next door in the Bowls Club facility, as the Resort had no dedicated carpark.
It was a perplexing decision by McCabe, since experienced, longstanding previous CEO Dale Dickson had resolutely refused for the previous decade to remove that carpark provision. Dickson also refused to sell the last remaining portion of the Bowls Club not then owned by Tate and was duly sacked by Tate.
In quick time, McCabe complied with the Mayor’s wishes and used his delegated authority from Council to strip the Resort of its carpark. His reasoning, according to Council minutes, was because the allocation was ‘unlikely to withstand legal challenge’ (see below extract from Council Minutes).
Despite repeated FOI requests to establish the veracity of this claim, the Council has declined to release the legal advice that it relied upon to overturn an ironclad guarantee Plaza Resort residents had relied upon since 1987, citing “legal and commercial confidence”.
After sacking Dickson, CEO since 2005, Tate launched a “nationwide search” for a new CEO. In December 2021, Tate appointed former Townsville City CEO and crony David Edwards. After just six weeks in the role, Edward resigned in disgrace over corruption findings relating to his previous role.
In February 2022, Tom Tate handpicked another crony, Tim Baker, a minor Tasmanian state bureaucrat with no similar relevant experience as a city CEO. In June 2022, Baker dutifully approved the sale of the final lot of former Surfers Bowls Club land to a local businessman, Michael Turner, at well below market rates.
In August 2025, it was revealed that Turner had secretly sold the last piece of the Bowls Club land to Tate at well below market value. The public outcry was intense and former NSW Supreme Court Chief Judge Anthony Whealy led calls for a corruption inquiry into the sale.
As soon as he completed his full purchase of the former Bowls Club, Tate promptly removed Plaza Resort residents’ access to the Surfers Plaza car park, as McCabe had enabled him to do.
Despite Tate screwing over Surfer Plaza Resort residents by removing their parking and openly admitting the City Plan requirement for parking was not achieved by Tate’s proposed scam, given the Resort had no guaranteed parking at all, CEO Tim Baker’s administration strongly recommended to Councillors that requirement and gave the Mayor what he wanted.
The appeal
But Councillors didn’t do that and, on 25 July 2023, voted overwhelmingly to reject the development application. Tate’s tenant and hostel manager, Alfonso Abril, fronted the media after this decision, announcing his fervent intention to appeal the decision to the State Planning and Environment Court.
With Tate absent, Deputy Mayor Mark Hammel then fronted the media and set out the Council’s position in the matter. Hammel did so most awkwardly, as he was the only Councillor on the Planning Committee and one of the few in the Full Council to vote in favour of the Tate development.
“It’s always an interesting position when you have had an approval recommendation from city officers and then a refusal at council,” began an uncomfortable Hammel, according to the Gold Coast Bulletin.
Hammel then confirmed the Gold Coast municipality would duke it out with its own Mayor in Court:
“So, now it’s going to be the job of our team of solicitors to fight that appeal for us. What happens in the next stage and Court is an issue for the future.”
Nothing was ever reported in the Gold Coast Bulletin or anywhere else about this epic, anticipated court battle, which was set to be heard in November 2023. What was reported around that time was that the pods were suddenly going ahead at the Surfers Plaza Resort.
It was assumed, therefore, that Tate and Abril had won their appeal. And indeed, the Planning and Environment Court did issue a judgement on the matter. One in which Tate’s original proposal, put to Council despite not being approved by the other owners and rejected by Council in two separate votes, was accepted in its entirety.
How did such an undemocratic and seemingly unjust outcome ensue?
Because it was all stitched up outside court. The red rectangle in the below excerpt from the judgment enclosing the words ‘WITH THE CONSENT OF THE PARTIES’ signifies there was no courtroom drama.
The rich and powerful Mayor of the Gold Coast had his private development’s rejection overturned by the Queensland State Government’s so-called “alternative dispute resolution process” without ever seeing a judge. And certainly without any messy transcripts detailing discussions and impeding any plausible deniability.
As the Queensland Government website says, ‘almost all disputes’ that come before the Planning and Environment Court are determined outside court. What a boon for developers to be able to set up potentially mutually advantageous private meetings with public officials simply by having your planning application rejected, appealing the decision and seeing the start of a “beautiful friendship”.
Independent Australia is certainly not alleging that anything improper went on in this particular case, because without any records, oversight and transparency, it is impossible to determine what did go on.
What we do know is that in October 2023, three months after the Council rejection and a month before the appeal was set down to be decided by the Planning and Environment Court, the full Gold Coast City Council discussed this contentious matter. In this meeting, after Tate excused himself from voting again, the Council’s legal department gave a presentation.
As it was discussing sub judice, the meeting was quite appropriately deemed confidential and went in camera. No minutes have ever been produced about what was presented by the lawyers and probably never will, despite the matter no longer being sub judice and the matter being of acute public importance, because the Gold Coast Council under Tom Tate is notorious for hindering and obstructing transparency and the public’s right to know.
IA has, however, spoken to two Councillors present at that meeting. Neither of these grass-roots politicians had a very clear memory of these proceedings from barely two years ago. Nor could either dig up the legal brief or presentation surely provided to them by the City solicitors.
What was recalled by both was the Council Administration that strongly recommended the Tate proposal, advising them that the Council was “unlikely to be successful” in any appeal. This legal opinion, if it were given to Councillors, seems highly debatable, since the development was never properly approved by Surfers Plaza residents and this should never have come before Council. Also, because the development was in complete violation of the density and car parking parameters of the Gold Coast City plan.
So, not only should the proposal never have come before Council, but it was in breach of the Council’s own planning regulations in two major respects anyway.
This was the precise excuse interim GC CEO Joe McCabe used in his decision of November 2021, less than two years earlier, to take away the carparks of Surfers Plaza Resort residents.
The Gold Coast legal department clearly never did any searches into whether the Surfers Plaza Resort owners provided legal approval for the Tate pods development. Independent Australia was able to do these searches and establish that the Body Corporate never signed off on the Tate slum hostel development. This also suggests complicity or profound incompetence and/or negligence by CEO Baker’s public officials, this time the lawyers.
What is also confirmed from the minutes of the meeting after it went non-confidential is that Councillors voted to grant a delegated authority to CEO Tim Baker to negotiate on its behalf in this matter. Both Councillors strongly denied that the Council voted on or even discussed how Baker was to perform his delegated authority, merely that he was charged to produce the best outcome for Gold Coast ratepayers, which was confirmed in the openly available minutes from the October Council meeting.
In a matter as sensitive as a controversial business development presented to Council by their mayor, most reasonable people would expect the Gold Coast Council to exercise the highest standards of propriety, prudence and diligence. This did not occur and, indeed, the Council Administration proved itself to be highly ineffectual, if not criminally irresponsible.
Was it incompetence, negligence or actual corruption that allowed Tate’s disastrous pods development to proceed? Certainly, the Council Administration under CEO Tim Baker seemed eager to allow Tate’s disastrous pods development to go ahead, further financially enriching an already extremely wealthy Mayor with an extremely dubious character.
No transparency — not even the courtesy of a reply
No details about the form of the alternate dispute resolution process CEO Tim Baker engaged in with Tate or his agent, Alfonso Abril, or his lawyers have ever been released, nor has any report provided to the Council that Baker unilaterally overruled to grant Tate yet another financial bonanza.
Independent Australia has tried every reasonable avenue to access any report or notes about this matter and has repeatedly requested a dialogue with the CEO and the Mayor — but has never even been afforded the courtesy of being even acknowledged by either of these arrogant and self-entitled public officials, one of whom is an actual elected representative of the people. This lack of accountability to the media, or at least the media they do not endorse, is breathtaking in its chutzpah.
And despite Alfonso’s appeal no longer being sub judice, like McCabe’s 2021 car park legal opinion, the Council has refused to release any legal advice, advising us to go through the FOI process — the same process used by other parties attempting to gain clarification of the Council’s 2021 Plaza Resort car park decision. In that instance, the notoriously obstructive Gold Coast City Council has relied on legal and professional privilege to deny any application. There is no reason to believe they would do anything differently in that case.
It is clear that the Gold Coast City Council, under the municipal leadership of corruption and scandal magnet Tom Tate, administered by a CEO with no particular experience in his role, apart from too-close connections to Tate and other prominent conservative politicians, has a lot to hide.
Independent Australia will be presenting all our information, including this dossier, to the Queensland anti-corruption body this week, requesting a formal investigation into Tom Tate and the Gold Coast City Council Administration. We certainly hope we will not be ignored again, but even if we are, we have a great many other revelations waiting to be published on these pages.
There is only so long, surely, that the truth can be overlooked and justice denied until it becomes too obvious and absurd to deny. Or so we fervently hope, because otherwise, our society has reached an even more desperate pass than even we thought possible.
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.
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