Thursday, October 20, 2005
The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate is a placeman – in the ownership of a shady and hyper-wealth business organisation and levered into a position of political power.

In the 2005 remake, the placeman is an American Gulf War hero and only son of a famous Capitol Hill dynasty who mysteriously saves his platoon from an ambush. Our Manchurian Candidate is micro-chipped and - using his war hero status - is manoeuvred towards the highest office of State, where his mind and policies can be manipulated to do the bidding of big business.

The Gold Coast City Council may not exert the same level of political power as the current ‘Chairman of the Board’ of the ‘Office of the President of the United States of America’, but its decisions nevertheless still have significant pecuniary interest.

40 years ago, the Gold Coast did not exist; it was just a collection of beach shacks. Now it is a sprawling extravaganza of high rise apartments backed by canal-side McMansions and Australia’s 6th largest city. Its prosperity has been founded solely on property and lifestyle. There are no smoke stacks or manufacturing plants behind Surfers Paradise beach.

But to build a whole new lifetsyle city, with all the associated golf courses, casinos, canal developments, themeparks, roads, shops, restaurants and more shops in just four decades, you need a well-oiled planning regime and very few pesky regulations.

In Gold Coast City Council, there is not one Manchurian Candidate, but several “like-minded” Councillors, bankrolled by the shady ‘Commonsense Trust Fund’ – a property developer contribution scheme.

The Council is facing inquiry by the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) into allegations that voters were mislead into believing they were electing independent candidates, rather than a pro-development caucus, owned by the trust fund.

The current Deputy Mayor, Cr Power, is already knee-deep. E-mails subpoenaed from property developer Brian Ray (now dead) have shed light on the rationale behind the fund.
To another prospective contributor, Ray wrote “Mate, I’m just chasing you up to see whether you’re prepared to provide assistance to this camp to get some sensible members into Gold Coast City Council.”

Deputy Mayor Cr Power and another councillor, Cr Robbins (also now dead), were co-signatories for the release of electoral funds for use by appropriate selected candidates, who were, in their words, “worthy of election”.

In another e-mail, this time to the investment bank Macquarie Bank, Ray declared he wanted to “mount a campaign to win various wards for a caucus of like-minded members with whom we can negotiate in a similar way to the outcome achieved in the last Tweed Shire election.”
Tweed Shire Council was summarily dismissed by the NSW government after an inquiry concluded that a group of developers had set out to buy control of the council.

The distribution of campaign donations via a trust fund removed the Councillors one step far enough away from their donors when it came to declaring interests and excusing themselves from decision making.

Cr Pforr, who received $46,564.69 in funds – all but $550 coming from the property developers or from the Common Sense fund – said he felt “quite comfortable” with voting on a range of planning and property matters – unless it was connected with the Hope Island developer, who had individually contributed $10K.

Whatever the CMC concludes, the Gold Coast City Council is compromised. Its Machurian Candidates have been exposed. Residents are poorly served by planning policy subject to nothing but cursory scrutiny by politicians who are nothing but imposters, serving business, not the people.

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