Currumbin mosque proposal voted down by Gold Coast councillors
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Version 0 of 1. Gold Coast councillors have voted to reject the building of a mosque at Currumbin to cheers of “go the rednecks” after lengthy debate on Tuesday. The full meeting of Gold Coast city council attracted large crowds and required an increased security presence after recent threats to councillors. One councillor, Chris Robbins, last week accused Facebook of protecting people who were threatening her with gang-rape and death after she announced the development application. Councillors William Owen-Jones and Cameron Caldwell also received death threats after they supported the approval of the application to convert a warehouse into a mosque at a planning committee meeting last Wednesday. Robbins called for her colleagues to scrap the proposal, which they voted to do by 10 to 5. Glenn Tozer and Owen-Jones voted to support the application, telling the meeting they had received legal advice that to reject it would probably result in a legal appeal from the applicants, which would be a cost to the taxpayers. Speaking to Guardian Australia after the decision, Robbins said she moved the motion to reject the application because the council had “let the community down” by failing to properly assess the potential social impacts of the mosque. While some problems had been mitigated with caps on attendance and congregation size, others had emerged, she said. “Things like social cohesion, the ethnic composition of the community – and when you’re anticipating a big change … it is incumbent upon us to look at those changes and to see how any negative impacts can be mitigated,” Robbins said. She said the mosque’s proposed location near a residential area was “the real killer” of the application. “I think in that particular location, right on the edge of the industrial estate, it’s probably problematic. They’re not going to want to limit their hours of operation and get rid of their 4am start, because their obligation as followers of Islam is to begin their prayer cycle of five prayers a day when the first light appears in the sky,” she said. “That essentially means that people are coming and going from 4 o’clock in the morning, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So even just from the aspect of the hours of operation, I think that’s difficult.” The proposal received a record number of objections, some driven by anti-Islam sentiment. Robbins distanced her motion and the council’s decision from the latter. “There are two lots of objectors. One is the people objecting on religious grounds, and to be quite honest we’ve ignored them,” she said. “The other ones are the ones who are objecting on the social impact and the amenity. They’re the residents who live in the close proximity and would have been affected by social impacts.” Protesters, including members of anti-Islam group Patriotic Defence League Australia, cheered on Tuesday when the council vote rejected the application. Media at the meeting reported cries of “go the rednecks!” Robbins had previously referred to some critics of the proposal as “rednecks” when expressing disgust at threatening and bigoted comments on Facebook pages opposing the mosque. |