To round out the group, the newly announced
chosen casino operator is currently bogged
down in a nasty $100 million dispute where
it is alleged they spectacularly broke their
contract on a recent casino and resort project
in the Philippines - a project that reportedly is
losing money as we speak.
The Mayor, Premier and Deputy Premier
have always preached to the community
that they would only undertake this process
if there was ‘no risk’ to tax payers and rate
payers. This is despite having been made
aware of the detailed histories of these
companies time and time again, including
in person during the May 2014 Gold Coast
‘Community Cabinet’ meetings. Regardless
of the apparent mountain of legitimate risk
that has been presented to them - they
continue to support it. In fact it seems that
every time questions and concerns about
these companies and their shoddy pasts are
raised with local councillors, local LNP MPs
and the consortium themselves, they are met
with a deafening silence, or the odd deferring
or dismissive remark.
Finally we move in to dissect the very claims
from the consortium that seem to be driving
this crazy push to turn the broadwater into a
foreign suburb. The big four we’ll call them,
and they are the jobs, the environment, the
ships themselves and the accessibility/public
amenity.
JOBS
ASF ‘facts’ claim that there will be 5000 jobs
during construction and many more upon
completion, but what they fail to guarantee
is who those jobs will be for. A clear fact also
is that the major construction companies
involved have a well established business
model and MO for developments like this.
This consists of waiting until the last minute
before commencing a project, renegotiating
labour and materials deals and then shipping
in Chinese workers by the thousands,
It’s little wonder why Surfrider
Foundation Australia listed this
place as one of the country’s most
endangered waves. South Straddie is
indeed a world class and unique yet
threatened surf break; an irreplaceable
centrepiece in the Gold Coast’s surfing
crown. To risk it for wafting promises
on the wind of short term gains would
be madness // Photo Luke Sorensen
Chinese equipment and Chinese materials.
Sadly the new Free Trade Agreement our
federal government has signed with China
this past week relaxes a lot of the regulations
around 457 visa workers and has opened
up the floodgates to allow far more foreign
workers in to take what would potentially be
Australian jobs. Nowhere is their methodology
more evident than those same construction
companies’ $5 billion integrated resort
project currently being built in the Bahamas.
Reports in the likes of such esteemed
publications as The Wall Street Journal
reveal the locals there don’t get much work
at all, with just a few hundred allowed on
site. In fact the locals call the thousands of
Chinese workers in their blue helmets ‘the
prisoners’, and reckon that the worksite is
essentially a Chinese town, with all signs
and signals in Mandarin, and a daily wake