HEY ROOKIE CR – I’VE GOT A FEW TIPS AND SOME FACTS FOR YOU
AS the state’s second largest and the nation’s sixth largest city with surging population growth, the Gold Coast needs leaders who show responsibility, play a straight bat with the public and respects the facts without making things up.
If you’re good enough to be elected to office, then you’re capable of grasping that as it sorts out the leaders from the followers and the veteran time servers.
In that light, first-time local Councillor Mark Hammel has shown he doesn’t understand that.
Having been born on the Gold Coast and attended school here, I’ve always been interested in the city’s development.
Under my watch as Minister for Transport and Main Roads in the Palaszczuk Labor Government, we’ve seen record investments in Gold Coast infrastructure – billions in M1 upgrades, multiple light rail projects, three new Cross River Rail stations for Pimpama, Hope Island and Worongary as well as the second M1 (Coomera Connector) to take pressure off the M1 and give northern Gold Coast residents a way to work without needing to get on or off the M1.
That’s more than $5bn worth of Gold Coast projects which includes funding for planning for the next stage of the second M1 north of Coomera to establish costing, impacts and scope, all of which is well known.
At this early stage, there is no estimated costing established as that’s precisely what our transport experts are working on right now, which they will advise me of when their work is complete.
But that didn’t stop Cr Hammel cheaply preempting this necessary planning work by attacking the state government that has commissioned the work, with him speculating gargantuan costing figures he has simply invented because they are not based on any substantial work other than his own theorising and lust for media coverage.
So I make no apology for holding him to account (admittedly with a bit of colour) for his speculation because it lacked integrity, asked for details to be released that he knows are still being developed and used figures he floated that were fictional in nature.
In his second contribution on this matter in last week’s Bulletin, I see Cr Hammel is now quoting a much lower yet still exorbitant cost figure to his first suggested costing and has deserted his original exorbitant price tag of saying it would be larger than Cross River Rail.
What’s a few billion dollars only seven days apart?
Building new infrastructure is harder than building a media profile and I can assure Cr Hammel the Palaszczuk government will continue to build the infrastructure the Gold Coast needs but I’ll also call out bad and misleading behaviour when I see it.
If he wants to avoid the rookie tag as a first-time Councillor in future then I suggest he raise his standards and avoid the easy temptation of hyperbole and easy media headlines if it is indeed respect he craves rather than ridicule.