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<\/p>\nSenior staff at Queensland’s second largest council have spent an “exorbitant”, “disproportionately high” and “unacceptable” amount of ratepayer funds on international travel, according to some councillors.<\/p>\n
An expense report tabled at the City of Gold Coast’s Governance, Administration and Finance Committee on Tuesday showed staff spent $163,071 on domestic and international travel between July and December last year.<\/p>\n
That included more than $54,000 for a week-long trip to the United Kingdom by council chief executive Tim Baker and one of his staff in July.<\/p>\n
“In the last financial year, the City of Gold Coast had more than 2.5 times the cost of staff international travel than that of Brisbane City Council \u2014 this is despite our organisation being almost half the size,” committee chair Brooke Patterson said.<\/p>\n
“Our international travel costs compared to the council up the road \u2014 the Olympic council \u2014 are disproportionately high and this is unacceptable.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Brooke Patterson says more oversight of travel expenses is needed. (ABC Gold Coast: Dominic Cansdale)<\/p>\n
But the committee was told that between July and December 2025, staff spent $46,000 more on travel than what was\u00a0disclosed in the expense report.<\/p>\n
During heated questioning from councillors, council officers revealed the additional expenditure went toward five\u00a0professional development courses.<\/p>\n
But the individual\u00a0cost of each training course was withheld under what council documents described as obligations under the Privacy Information Act.<\/p>\n
Councillor Donna Gates said councillors had been denied detailed information.<\/p>\n
“We don’t know what any of these courses were, there’s no titles on any of it, we don’t know what form of personal development was undertaken,” she said.<\/p>\n
“There’s no point us looking at a report that doesn’t have the information in it that we’re using to formulate our next decision.”<\/p>\n
Councillor Naomi Fowler said there must be more scrutiny over travel expenses.<\/p>\n
“What were those costs from \u2014 it just seems exorbitantly high,” she said.<\/p>\n
Committee chair Brooke Patterson said such costs had not been withheld from travel expense reports in previous years.<\/p>\n
Travel saved ratepayers $9 million, says council<\/p>\n
The committee heard that between July and December last year,\u00a0Mr Baker’s international travel totalled more than $89,000, including $23,000 in previously undisclosed funds spent on an AI training course in the US.<\/p>\n
In a statement to the ABC, a council spokesperson said Mr Baker’s travel in 2025 was “unusual and driven by a specific set of circumstances”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“At that time, Invest Gold Coast was without a permanent CEO and Mr Baker undertook travel at the request of Invest Gold Coast to represent the organisation,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“In addition, following Tropical Cyclone Alfred, the CEO was required to travel in relation to insurance matters. That travel directly contributed to securing approximately $9 million in savings for the City.”<\/p>\n
Mr Baker is currently overseas in the United States with Mayor Tom Tate and Invest Gold Coast CEO Will Hodgman, representing the city at the annual “G’day USA” economic and cultural showcase in Los Angeles this week.<\/p>\n
Mr Baker also spent two weeks in the United States with Mayor Tom Tate and a staff member in October and November last year.<\/p>\n
Council documents showed the trip involved “professional development” that reduced the city’s reliance on external consultants, saving council up to $200,000 in future costs.<\/p>\n
“This trip also included support of the Mayoral Mission to the international boat show in Florida and the Fort Lauderdale sister city celebrations,” the documents said.<\/p>\n
The travel expenses of the mayor and councillors are due to be released in the city’s Annual Report later this year.<\/p>\n
More oversight needed<\/p>\n
Cr Patterson said she would propose councillors received independent legal advice on what privacy obligations applied to staff travel expenses at council’s next full meeting.<\/p>\n
“No-one expected to see the scale of international travel that we’re currently being set with,” she said.<\/p>\n
“That’s why it now needs council oversight.”<\/p>\n
The city spokesperson said all future travel by chief executive Tim Baker would be approved by a council vote.<\/p>\n
Cr Patterson said the cost of international travel for more than 30 staff, including those at council-owned entities like Invest Gold Coast, exceeded $350,000 in the 2024-25 financial year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior staff at Queensland’s second largest council have spent an “exorbitant”, “disproportionately high” and “unacceptable” amount of ratepayer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,2467,180064,5939,252417,72772,179859],"class_list":["post-501970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-council","tag-gold-coast-council","tag-spending","tag-tim-baker","tag-tom-tate","tag-travel-costs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}