How Gold Coast dodged a bullet over second casino plan
Five years ago there were big plans for this site. Recent events have shown how badly those plans could have gone wrong.
Gold Coast
Don't miss out on the headlines from Gold Coast. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Dear God, the Gold Coast dodged a bullet.
Cast your mind back to the heady pre-Covid days of 2018/19, when the Palaszczuk government was in its full pomp.
The biggest debate in this city centred around a state government proposal to build what they euphemistically called a ‘Global Tourism Hub’. There was much talk of entertainment facilities, celebrity restaurants, even an aquarium, but although they rarely used the word – even avoiding it entirely in a survey of public opinion – it was all a foil for delivering a second casino to the Gold Coast, with the easy revenue stream for the state government that would result.
A site in Southport was earmarked for the development, despite adjoining the Broadwater Parklands, a centre of family-focused community activity, which recently has also become home to the Gold Coast Show.
Thanks goodness the people of the Gold Coast were not easily hoodwinked, and after a sustained campaign of opposition centred around the proposal’s obvious flaws, it was finally abandoned in July 2020 as the world – and Queensland – grappled with the outbreak of Covid-19.
Hindsight is 20/20 vision, but given the trouble that has since engulfed both The Star Group and the Queen’s Wharf development in Brisbane, it’s hard to imagine that the proposal would have been anything other than a fiasco.
That The Star is facing an uncertain future despite holding the only casino licence on the Gold Coast says a lot about the supposed benefits of that particular “monopoly”, and the ability of the city to support another gambling den.
And that the Queensland government finds itself in the position of considering bailing out a casino operator – at the cost of potentially hundreds of millions in foregone revenue to taxpayers – says it all about the moral bankruptcy of the state’s sordid involvement in the gambling trade.
The great excuse for allowing the gambling curse to mushroom into every nook and cranny of Queensland has been the good done in communities by recycling some of the money raised.
So a few sad souls drop the mortgage on the pokies, but the state – which made $1.9 billion in gambling taxes in the 2022-23 financial year – gets to fund nurses and police. So that’s all good, right?
It’s astonishing to think that this crumb of comfort may now be at least partly foregone in order to save Queen’s Wharf from being sucked into The Star’s vortex of troubles.
At the time of the ‘Global Tourism Hub’ debate, there was much talk of the potential for the development to suck in more international tourists, most particularly from Asian markets. As recent reports in this newspaper have outlined, overseas tourism to the Gold Coast has not recovered since the pandemic.
Not one of the many tourism experts spoken to by this newspaper has come even close to suggesting a second casino of any kind would be a panacea.
Instead, if the project had succeeded in being built, it would by now most likely be a financial leach sucking dollars from the pockets of a local community already struggling with cost of living pressures.
That was always going to be the case – the overwhelming majority of gambling losses in this state are borne by ordinary Queenslanders.
One final point. If the Southport site earmarked for a second casino had been given away to Hard Rock or any of the other operators which showed interest at the time, it would have been lost forever to the community.
It’s now instead being considered for an indoor live music venue, something that may be very well suited in an area that has this year successfully paid host to a number of sold-out outdoor concerts.
If it can be done without the beep and whirr of poker machines, it would be a far better outcome for the city.
Looking back, my goodness, we really dodged a bullet on this one.
Originally published as How Gold Coast dodged a bullet over second casino plan
SEQ school bans student promposals, threatens suspension
An elite secondary school has banned students from ‘promposing’ to their dates for formal, with one student threatened with suspension.
Man charged with horror hammer attack on motorsport identity
A man has been arrested and charged in connection with an alleged attack on racing car driver Chris Pappas at his Gold Coast home, leaving him in a serious condition.