Remember when: Mayor Sir Bruce Small said unemployed would get better value on Gold Coast

YOU get better value for your dole on the Gold Coast said the city’s mayor — Sir Bruce Small.

Gold Coast History: Gold Coast Bulletin 1978, January 14. Front Page.

Gold Coast Bulletin, Saturday January 14, 1978

YOU get better value for your dole on the Gold Coast said the city’s mayor — Sir Bruce Small.

The mayor encouraged the unemployed youth to live on the Gold Coast.

“It’s better than poking around the backstreets of congested cities in polluted air,” he said.

“They can come here and live just as cheaply while enjoying the climate and the beaches.”

That was Sir Bruce’s reaction to the Gold Coast’s high unemployment rate.

Sir Bruce said he deplored the “current Australian dole system” and had admiration for some of the employment methods of European dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

“I watched how they built their fantastic autostradas and autobahns with dole labour in the 1930s,” said Sir Bruce, who was 82 at the time of the comments.

“They used a dole scheme similar to the one I advocate.

Gold Coast Bulletin 1978, January 14. Front Page.

“The Federal Government would pay the dole to local authorities who would then pay the unemployed to do jobs around the city.

“That’s how Hitler and Mussolini developed their countries and look at their highways today.”

Sir Bruce said he naturally lost all respect for Hitler and Mussolini “after they went insane” for power.

Figures showed the Gold Coast unemployment rate was about 10 per cent, higher than the state average of 7.56 per cent.

Sir Bruce never got to see any such scheme take effect

The Small council was dismissed just a fortnight later by the Bjelke-Petersen Government and replaced with an administrator.