Donald wants a Trump Tower in Australia. That’s the last thing we need

January 28, 2026 — 5:00am

There was “Packer’s Pecker”, the derisive sobriquet for James Packer’s 271-metre-high, 75-storey Sydney harbourside hotel and casino tower at Barangaroo, and now there could well be Donald’s … well, I’ll leave it to you to add the most suitable alliterative epithet.

The Trump Organisation, the development arm of his empire linked to luxury hotels and apartments – these days supposedly run by the US president’s sons, Don Jr and Eric – is in “advanced discussions” to develop an 89-storey high-rise tower on Queensland’s Gold Coast, according to recent reports.

Even by the standards of an overdeveloped Gold Coast, this news is as tacky, and concerning, as it gets. Of course, everyone associated with the proposed Trump Tower – typically a mix of residential, retail and hotel accommodation – will be hoping it eventuates and succeeds.

But where Trump fails, trouble – often of the vengeful kind – can follow, and on an international scale.

When the US president launched his bizarre crusade to see Canada become the 51st state of the US, some Canadians, searching for reasons for Trump’s antipathy towards America’s most benign neighbour, attributed it to the failure of his eponymous hotels in Toronto and Vancouver. The properties are now branded St Regis and Paradox.

When The Washington Post enquired whether the two failed hotels were a factor in the US president’s antagonism towards Canada, an anonymous White House official dismissed the suggestion as being “absurd”.

But suspicions linger. Who can say whether the Trumps won’t turn on Australia for some spurious reason at some time in the future if the Gold Coast plans don’t pan out?

It’s a possibility that clearly doesn’t bother Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate, who has publicly expressed his enthusiasm for a Trump Tower.

Furthermore, federal Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie has been quoted as saying that the Trump Organisation should also consider taking on the Queensland tropical resort islands that remain dormant following cyclone damage.

Tate and McKenzie’s constituents are not by no means as keen. While a petition by Jordan Nguyen in favour of the proposal’s “immense potential to transform the local economic landscape” had attracted 497 signatures at the time of writing, a petition urging it to be rejected, in part due to many residents being “deeply uncomfortable with the Trump brand and what it represents”, had garnered a telling 9354 signatures.

“For heaven’s sake keep this idiot away from Australia before he wants to take Queensland as another state of the US,” writes Maree, a signatory of the latter petition writes on its website while David claims that the US president’s comments and speeches would “under our new hate speech laws would be illegal.”

Trump has met Australian resistance to his proposals previously. Although the US electorate somehow deemed him a fit and proper person to be its president, authorities in NSW in the past believed otherwise.

His bid to open Sydney’s first casino more than 30 years ago was blocked by regulators who expressed concern over his alleged “mafia connections”, a revelation that was widely reported both in Australia and the US in 2017 following a story, sourced from declassified NSW government cabinet documents, published in The Australian.

“Atlantic City [the East Coast US city where Trump once owned a failed casino] would be a dubious model for Sydney,” a summary of the NSW Police Board’s report concluded on May 4, 1987.

Undeterred, in 2008, Trump told The Australian Financial Review that the Trump Organisation was considering an Australian move.

Proof that the Trump Organisation doesn’t always get its way emerged last year when a $721 million Trump hotel development plan in Belgrade, Serbia, was abandoned following fierce opposition.

Really, you don’t need a huge amount of business acumen to conclude that the market for potential buyers and stayers for a Trump Tower could be limited, with the US president having seriously offended the Europeans, the Brits, the Canadians, and a host of other nations.

Therefore, surely, a risk exists of a Trump Tower Down Under becoming a white elephant, with some due diligence sorely overdue on the Gold Coast.

Australia is the wrong place for a Trump Tower, our tourism industry doesn’t need it, and it’ll do nothing to attract the right kind of visitor to our sandy shores, let alone those of the Gold Coast.