Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate Q&A on his Covid lockdown rebellion

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate has broken ranks to rebel against state health advice and call for the city’s lockdown to be lifted. He tells us why. FULL VERBATIM Q&A >>>

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JUST on 14 months ago, small business operators across the Gold Coast variously described Mayor Tom Tate as a “deserter”, questioned his “pro-Gold Coast” and “pro-tourism” credentials and accused him of abandoning the tourism industry.

They were furious he was vocally supporting Premier Anna Palaszczuk’s controversial and prolonged closure of the Queensland border, aimed at keeping Covid at bay but at the same time crippling the city economy.

Fast forward to this week, and Cr Tate has broken ranks with the leaders of 11 Local Government Authorities under lockdown, calling for the Gold Coast to be excluded.

His reasoning – backed by 60 per cent of 2500-plus Bulletin readers in an online poll – is that with zero community transmission of the virus detected on the Gold Coast, there is no need to shut the place down.

The Bulletin asked the Mayor for more clarity on his stance and why it had changed to rebel against state health advice this week.

In a revealing interview, Cr Tate says his rebellion is data based, more people are dying from restrictions stress than Covid and he calls for more targeted lockdowns instead of “throwing a blanket over millions of people”.

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate during a press conference at Metricon Stadium on Thursday. Picture: Tertius Pickard.

RYAN KEEN: How much of your stand against the Gold Coast’s current lockdown is fuelled by the pain and hurt you are no doubt seeing and hearing about from the community’s stalled small businesses, their staff, casual workers etc?

TOM TATE: As much as I feel for these workers and businesses, my position regarding lockdown cannot be swayed by any emotional response. It is solely based on data. Nothing has changed in that regard since Covid arrived on our shores in March 2020. Today is remarkably different to March 2020 when the virus began sweeping Australia. There was mass panic across the world as the virus was a complete ‘unknown’. Importantly, we also had known community transmissions in our city at that time (Tom Hanks and his wife for example). So the atmosphere was considerably different and the data showed we had community transmissions. That’s why I took such a tough stance in March 2020.

Today, we have multiple vaccines available, we have testing sites, quarantine processes, a better educated population, QR code processes and vaccination super hubs. This allows us to be more sophisticated in our approach to lockdowns. We can even target suburbs or cities so there is no need to throw a blanket over millions of people because of local cases. I just urge the authorities to back their data both ways.

RK: Can you relate some examples of some of the difficult situations, people’s situations you are hearing about, that have been caused by this latest lockdown and the most recent three-day lockdown?

TT: There are many. One family’s story is that four incomes have been lost from that household overnight, simply because two of the family members happened to be visiting the Gold Coast when the 4pm Saturday lockdown call came through. They left the city before the 4pm deadline and returned to far north Queensland but given they were in a declared hot spot at the time, their employers won’t let them back at work for 14 days. They have even taken Covid tests to show they are negative yet their employers have refused to have them back. These are the significant flow-on effects of a decision taken 2000km from where they live.

RK: How concerned are you about the long-lasting impacts of the economic devastation now being caused on both the city’s future – the mental health of people?

TT: Very. To date, it appears more Australians have died through stress-related illness than the actual virus itself and that takes into account the hundreds lost in Victoria as a direct result of Covid last year. There has also been a significant spike in domestic and family violence and increased alcohol consumption being recorded across Australia. The long-lasting impacts of this are almost immeasurable.

A deserted Broadbeach Mall during lockdown. Picture: Richard Gosling.

RK: What did you make of Dr Jeannette Young dismissively saying a day after you made your “exclusion” position clear, that you had “clarified” your position the following morning? (Because actually you stuck to your guns and didn’t back away from it - but she seemed to be trying to say that you had backed down).

TT: I respect the State Government and CHO. My stance regarding letting the Gold Coast out of lockdown is data-driven and that has not changed. Throughout this pandemic, data has informed the CHO on her decisions so in the same way, a lack of data (zero community cases) should also drive decisions to relax lockdowns. It’s that simple.

RK: How worried are you about the possibility of the lockdown being extended after Sunday? And how scary is that scenario for the Gold Coast, given someone like Village Roadshow Theme Parks chief operating officer Bikash Randhawa has already said many businesses are “practically trading insolvent”?

TT: “Very worried. Post Sunday, if this lockdown is extended, there will be hundreds of less businesses in our city to receive any Federal or State financial support. Again, this will create more stress, more insolvency and more family breakdowns than any illness Covid is inflicting.

RK: How surprised or gutted were you that the Gold Coast was included in the 11 Local Government Areas to be locked down in the first place when it had zero community cases?

TT: I accept that the city needed to go into the initial 11 LGAs as early data available to the CHO on Saturday morning (July 31) may have caused her concern that the Gold Coast could have cases. Six days later, there has been zero community transmissions in our city. That should give her enough confidence that we have no community transmissions here.

RK: Are you starting to question in a wider sense whether the general reaction to Covid, both in Australia and around the world, is an over-reaction? And that the mental health toll, the personal toll for people of the response to the pandemic is actually worse than the pandemic itself?

TT: See above.

RK: Are you actually getting angry on behalf of the Gold Coast about this situation? Please describe how you are feeling at this current lockdown?

TT: The State has outlined to me that their concern is that if the Gold Coast is allowed out of lockdown before Greater Brisbane, Brisbane residents may try to sneak down to the Coast. Effectively, this means that our 66,000 small businesses and 680,000 residents are being unduly punished because of a concern about Brisbane residents possibly doing the wrong thing. If that is the State’s concern, I’d strongly encourage them to focus on improved compliance measures along the lines of a ‘ring-of-steel’ approach. By now, 17 months after this virus hit Australia, surely we have a system in place that can tackle outbreaks more locally, rather than sweeping up almost three million people because several Brisbane schools had outbreaks. My message is: work to constantly improve our compliance processes and have the ability to restrict movements within localised outbreaks otherwise, even when we hit 70-plus per cent vaccination rates in Australia, we face being locked down for weeks on end when there is not a single case in our city. Don’t punish an entire community (such as ours with zero community transmissions) and three million other residents in the 11 LGAs.