Never mind Trump’s Gold Coast tower: his kind already own chunks of Australia

Located in the heart of Surfers Paradise, Queensland, is a small suburb called the Isle of Capri. It consists of luxury waterfront properties with price tags that would make you wince like that time Idris Elba ate a hot wing. There’s one house in particular that’s up for auction in a few weeks. 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms and an eight-car garage. It also has a butler’s residence, a ‘conversation’ room and a temperature-controlled wine cellar. The entire property sits on half an acre of land and was last sold in 2023 for $24 million.

A few minutes walk from this property is the site of 3 Trickett Street, a vacant block of beachfront land. There’s no building here, it’s a slab of concrete that has sat empty for over a decade. However, this expanse of cement with a smattering of weeds sprouting through its cracks is worth more than $60 million. 

It’s difficult to comprehend this level of wealth if you’re transferring $50 from one bank account to the other so Telstra doesn’t suddenly deduct it and leave you with nothing until pay day. But properties like this for the ultra-rich are not unusual for Surfer’s Paradise, or indeed the Gold Coast in general. So it’s no wonder billionaires like the Trump family are looking to move into the neighbourhood. 

The Trump Gold Coast?

The proposed Trump International Hotel and Tower at 3 Trickett Street is planned to reach 91 floors into the Queensland sky, with luxury apartments at a starting price of $5 million. Local councils and governments are excited at the prospect. 

Deputy President of the Gold Coast Chamber of Commerce, Sarah Colgate, told the ABC: “What matters for our city is people want to invest here, and the quality of the product and the experience it brings to visitors coming to the Gold Coast. For me, that’s more important than what the actual name on the tower is.” Loosely translated, this means: Money is good. We like money.

The name is the main thing that is making people’s skin crawl. This ivory tower’s design is currently planned to have the word TRUMP emblazoned at its peak, towering over Queensland’s beachfront city like the eye of Sauron. Because of course it is. We’re talking about a man who would stamp his name on the consumer-facing side of the Moon if he could.

What about the here and now?

If you go north of the Gold Coast for a few hours, you’ll find one of Queensland’s most popular holiday spots. Hamilton Island boasts white sandy beaches, gorgeous blue waters and acts as a gateway to the majesty of the Great Barrier Reef. When people around the world think of Australia, paradise spots like Hamilton and its natural surrounding beauty pop into their minds. In December 2025, the entire island was purchased by US company Blackstone for $1.2 billion.

Blackstone is a private equity firm based in New York. What does that mean exactly? Firms like these buy and sell other companies and valuable land. That’s pretty much their remit. Making deals to own other people’s things that will self-generate revenue. And Blackstone is one of the best to ever do it. They have over $1 trillion in assets. Yes you read correctly, ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. They own commercial real estate, data centres, healthcare and travel payment systems, oil fields, theme parks and Ancestry dot com. Buying these companies and locations is the easiest way to earn an eye-watering amount of money by doing the least amount of actual work.

And they haven’t just settled for one part of Australia. They’ve been here for over a decade. In 2022, they bought Crown Resorts. In Brisbane, they own commercial property in Geebung and Pinkeba and in Melbourne, their land purchases are in the suburbs of Laverton North and Tottenham. All future sites of AI data centres. They already own Asia-Pacific data centre provider AirTrunk, which they bought for $24 billion.

So why does this matter? Who cares if this company owns a few random chunks of Australia? To find the answer, we have to look at the top. Blackstone co-founder and chief executive Stephen Schwarzman is the thirty-third richest person in the world with a personal net worth of A$50 billion. As a direct result of his wealth, you can see the 79 year-old’s name all across America and the world. 

• The Stephen A. Schwarzmann Centre at Yale University
• The Schwarzman College of Computing at MIT
• The Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at Oxford
• The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at the New York Public Library
• The Schwarzman Animal Medical Centre in Manhattan
• The Schwarzman Scholars fellowship at Tsinghua University in Beijing

Being rich enough to pay organisations to put your name on their buildings translates to one thing: oligarchy. And does this self-aggrandising behaviour remind you of anyone? Well, it should because it’s certainly no coincidence. 

Schwarzman has given Donald Trump’s various election campaigns tens of millions of dollars over the years. He’s one of the thirty-seven donors funding the $300 million ballroom extension to the White House. But, most importantly, Schwarzman was the head of the now failed Strategic and Policy Forum which was established to improve job growth for Donald Trump during his first term. This group also included the man who invented the concept of mass layoffs, GE chairman Jack Welch, and that ketamine-addled human meme Elon Musk. 

The group disbanded within six months without achieving anything. But Schwarzman continued in his financial support of the past and future President. In November 2025, Schwarzmann attended a red carpet White House dinner for Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was making his first USA visit since being implicated in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

How did a Trump supporter end up owning Australian property?

The short answer is money. The long answer: Joe Hockey. 

Australian Ambassador to the United States is one of the most sought after post-politics jobs in the federal government. After acting as Tony Abbott’s treasurer and delivering the infamously disastrous 2014 budget, Joe Hockey became our US ambassador between 2016 and 2020. The position comes with a $30 million residence in Washington D.C., free travel and the ability to charge the Australian taxpayer for all lunches, dinners and luxury expenses. 

But Hockey didn’t just have his feet up during this time. He used the position to network, gather valuable multi-million dollar contacts and became Australia’s ‘Trump whisperer’. 

In his final year as ambassador, he founded the investment firm Bondi Partners. Companies like this keep their day-to-day functions purposely vague but one of their milestone deals was acting as negotiator and advisor for Schwarzman and Blackstone to ensure their purchase of Crown Resorts in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney for $8 billion. Since that day in 2022, Blackstone and other Trump-friendly clients of Bondi have been exclusive guests at Hockey’s million dollar garden parties in Sydney. These days, Hockey himself regards Trump as a professional friend and a ‘phenomenon’. 

With local council members, billionaire CEOs and ex-Liberal treasurers all refusing to even acknowledge Trump’s consolidation of power and desire for global destruction, it’s easy to see how the President of the United States can say, do and buy whatever he wants.

So, people are understandably upset about the idea of a Trump Tower being built on the Gold Coast. The thought of having to look at the name of a convicted felon and rapist every morning on their way to work is a bridge too far for some Australians. Currently, an online petition has over 130,000 signatures to stop its development. Maybe the petition will reach 500,000. Even a million might be possible. Whatever happens, it’s a lot of energy directed towards preventing Trump’s name and reputation being smeared across the beaches of Queensland sometime in the future.

The cost of living in Australia is the worst it’s been in decades. More than half of Australians say they struggle to meet basic needs and the long-term effect on our collective mental health will be measured for years to come. So when those in charge spend their days networking and negotiating so they can have a few more million (or trillion) dollars in their bank accounts, it instills a desolate sense of hopelessness for those of us weighing up whether or not to buy that brand name can of baked beans. 

When this happens, combined with the attempt to grasp the concept of houses with eight-car garages, a reminder that everyday life isn’t supposed to be this hard comes around again. Getting out of bed in order to simply financially survive and keep our heads above water isn’t supposed to be normal, but is rather the result of something going very wrong in society. 

So ultimately, despite the noble desire to reject the billion-dollar reach of dictators into our country, a towering sign on top of a skyscraper is irrelevant. Just because his name isn’t on a building, doesn’t mean Trump’s money, friends and influence aren’t already here. You just have to know where to look.