Thank the Lord for Councillor Glenn Tozer who spoke up this week about the Gold Coast Mayor’s employment of Pastor Sue Baynes as a spiritual adviser for the city. The matter was exposed on 31 March by the Rationalist Society of Australia who asked for clarification about whether he is committed to the Seven Mountains Mandate as advocated by Pastor Baynes in a Youtube video. This is such an aberrant issue that you have to wonder why Cr Tozer is the only councillor to comment? Do the other 13 councillors not see the controversial implications of this appointment? Are they afraid to speak alternative views? Or have they just given up trying?

ABC Gold Coast followed up on 5 April with a story titled “Tom Tate’s spiritual adviser warned of ‘demonic stronghold’ at HOTA” covering the appointment and questioning the intent to exert religious influence over council.

Gold Coast Bulletin was last to report this. Their angle was comical. It took the heat out of the argument and concluded by quoting that Tate said his religious views are personal and do not affect his role as mayor.

With the Seven Mountains Mandate coming to light in the secular community, curious coincidences coalesce and cause people to question motives, substance and rationale behind all sorts of decisions promulgated by the mayor.

The mandate sets out spheres or pillars of mind-molding influence: Family, Business, Government, Church, Media, Education, Arts/Entertainment.

Family

There’s plenty of Tate’s rhetoric about families on the public record and we see lots of family imagery like the picture on the cover of the council’s Corporate Plan. Yet there’s not much follow through with social welfare policy and action. Even this most important statutory plan of the council fails to encompass matters like child safety, youth homelessness and housing affordability.

Education

Tate’s strong push for the promotional body ‘Study Gold Coast’ has been remarkable, since promotion of education and training isn’t typically the role and responsibility of local government. I wouldn’t pick a bone with this one because growth of this sector is indeed critical for sustainability of the city, and it’s neither here or there that it’s driven by aims for economic development more than community development. Boosting education and training brings benefits across many areas and aspects of the city.

Media

Since coming to power in 2012, Tate has centralised and taken control over council media and marketing. He also seems to have a stranglehold on local news media and in partnership they wield formidable power over narratives about the city. I have previously written about this as a form of mediacracy. https://www.morethansunshine.net/blogspot/2020/4/3/pervasive-mediacracy

Mediacracy is central to Tate’s Game of Mates that plays out across the city like the board game Monopoly. If we observe closely, we can see shoddy governance, ‘grey favours’, a lack of transparency and blurring of the separation of powers - between councillors, consultants and council staff, church and state etc. This is not only evident in town planning and development matters. It pervades many dimensions and realms - church and church school communities, gambling, horse racing, prostitution, drug protection rackets, boating and aviation, and commercial use of public space, like beach bars. Media has become an effective tool in hijack of the city for private profiteering, but most Gold Coasters don’t observe public affairs closely, allowing the Game of Mates to thrive.

Arts/Entertainment

When Tate became mayor, I was working for the council as manager of the cultural precinct project. My workmates and I were delighted that he supported arts and culture with great gusto. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who appreciated fine arts and architecture. We presumed the encouragement came from Ruth, his wife, and now it seems her good friend, and spiritual adviser, Pastor Sue Baynes, was also a positive influencer.

It’s wonderful for the Gold Coast to finally have a decent Home of The Arts. There is never enough, or too much, investment in the the arts and cultural infrastructure. And the way cultural infrastructure is delivered is fundamental (pardon the pun) to its success. Part of the reason why I walked away from the cultural precinct project after the design competition was influence from the mayor’s office, to drive an arts/entertainment operational model instead of and arts/cultural development model. I think the mayor, some of his HOTA and Major Events Board appointees don’t understand the difference… or recognise that this underlies why the State and Federal Governments overlook the Gold Coast when it comes to cultural funding. This is why ratepayers have paid too much and fully funded the first three stages of HOTA. No other local government in Australia has funded the lion’s share of their primary art gallery. The topic deserves a whole other essay to explain why the Gold Coast deserves more State and Federal funding for the arts.

Hidden demons

ABC Gold Coast’s story revealed a conflict that Pastor Baynes has spoken about regarding hire of the HOTA outdoor stage for religious events. This must place the mayor in a pickle, since he has bent over backwards to facilitate multi-faith events. He has provided council funding and authorised fee waivers for staging events at HOTA and other public places like Broadwater Parklands.

Will her appointment as spiritual adviser exacerbate or resolve this conflict of interest? And what is the purview of her advice?

As a former parliamentary candidate for the Family First Party which was fiercely anti anti-gay marriage, does her influence extend to other events that require a permit to take place on public land?

One might question why the Gold Coast Rainbow Communities Pride Festival Fair Day planned for 26 March in Macintosh Island Park was cancelled under instruction from the council on the eve “due to bad weather’, when the day actually turned out to be perfectly fine and sunny.

Perhaps such conjecture is unfair but there is certainly a lack of transparency and it’s hard to work out what to believe. If there’s a demon anywhere, it’s out of public view, under an opaque veil.

Sometimes, the unspoken things are the most important

The biggest issue for me is something that the Seven Mountains Mandate is silent on - the Gold Coast’s greatest asset - the natural environment.

We see self-proclamations in jest by Tate as the ‘Greenest Mayor in the land’. We also know for a fact that the council’s environmental conservation policy is gossamer thin. There was a climate change strategy 2009-13 which expired and was never renewed. To avoid scrutiny about its environmental performance, the council discontinued monitoring, measuring and publishing annual State of the Environment reports.

Gold Coasters might now question if the Tate’s level of respect and care for the environment is influenced by his spiritual adviser and the religious doctrine. He says “no”, and that his religious views are personal. The general public is unlikely to ever know for sure, but questions will linger...

Does the mayor fail to recognise the importance of conserving the environment because it’s omitted from the doctrine?

Does the conspicuous absence of environmental policy and action result from deliberate suppression to stay out of the way of the business of development?

Does the doctrine influence the mayor’s view of our precious World Heritage mountain rainforests as pots of gold to be exploited with a cableway for mass tourism?

Who’s going to save our city?

It does seem like Mayor Tate has lost the plot. Gold Coast Council doesn’t need a spiritual adviser. It needs a new leader. Someone who can think and act rationally, creatively and fairly, about sustainable development of the city. Someone who is uncompromised by vested interests and self-serving woo-woo doctrine. It’s only two years folks, till we get a chance to elect a new mayor. I have noticed the social media fakes have already started trolling. If I had a faith, I would be praying for a saviour to rise up soon…

Click on the links for more

Crikey How the Seven Mountains is influencing Australian politics

Rationalist Society Call for Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate to clarify if he supports the Seven Mountains Mandate