Paul Weston: Gold Coast’s mayoral race a failure to voters ahead of March council poll

Tom Tate loves driving his Ferrari. Mayoral rival Mona Hecke is proud of her Mitsubishi Lancer. Neither is out of the parking lot in the road to the upcoming election. They’ve stalled.

TOM Tate loves driving his Ferrari. Mayoral rival Mona Hecke is proud of her Mitsubishi Lancer. Neither is out of the parking lot in the road to the March council poll. They’ve stalled.

Businessman Brett Lambert was in the 2016 race. One of his jobs is managing a petrol station at Southport. Council insiders suggest his 2020 campaign has not yet left the bowser.

Mayor Tom Tate with the latest Ferrari, at Palazzo Versace. Picture Glenn Hampson.

Dry cleaner Virginia Freebody has put her hand up. Her Facebook page showcases a cheeky sense of humour along with a host of spelling errors. She is anti-Tom Tate and a cruise ship terminal.

Before Christmas she reposted on her Facebook page: “If I had sex as much as I got screwed, … life would be awesome.”

Gold Coast Mayoral candidate Virginia Freebody. Pic Tim Marsden

Mr Lambert polled 3.01 per cent of the vote in 2016. He could not compete financially with Cr Tate who put up $182,000 of his own cash. This is for context for the newbies.

Perhaps this won’t matter so much. Experienced council poll advisers say the poll on March 28 will be the city’s first true Facebook campaign.

Ms Freebody’s page has 599 “likes”, Mr Lambert 210 and Ms Hecke 1819. The Mayor’s page has 23,474.

Let’s consider some more figures.

Anti-Tate campaigner Karen Rowles is trumpeting on her Facebook page the 8000 signatures on a change.org petition declaring “We want Tom Tate dismissed. We want a Gold Coast council that listens to ratepayers”.

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But then consider these numbers: At the 2016 poll Councillor Tate gained 172,735 votes from 274 booths. He was the only candidate to have volunteers at every booth, which helped him secure 63.86 per cent of the vote.

The Mayor has been much less prolific on Facebook since his chief of staff, Wayne Moran, stood down in late November pending an internal investigation following the Crime and Corruption Commission’s Operation Yabber investigation.

Brett Lambert working at the Southport service station. Pic Mike Batterham

Ms Hecke’s campaign team was offered a free hit when the report was released on Friday but her media statement, calling on Cr Tate to stand down while “these matters are resolved by the CCC”, was inaccurate and could not be fully reported.

The council set out to correct it, warning media that the Office of Independent Assessor and not the corruption watchdog was now investigating the Mayor.

A community leader who supports an independent candidate like Ms Hecke told your columnist: “I think she needs a very experienced campaign and media manager to help her capitalise on the scandals that were revealed in the Bulletin this week. I fear that her campaign is preaching to the converted.

“Many people will vote for her as a protest vote against what they dislike about the Mayor and his voting bloc but I doubt this will be enough.

“It is a huge task to take on the well resourced and volunteer base of the incumbent. Given the likelihood of the Mayor being returned, it becomes even more important for people to vote for candidates who are truly independent.

Mona Hecke at the launch of her campaign for mayor of the Gold Coast. Picture Glenn Hampson.

“It will be a tragedy for the Gold Coast if we have four more years of a bloc that always votes for the Mayor’s policies.”

This election campaign has been very much focused on the divisions, partly because four fresh faces will be elected to the council and many divisional candidates have launched solid campaigns. It will not change fast unless someone in the mayoral race starts their engines.