I see this from a different perspective as I actually own property in the Watergate building and have been living there from day one. Right from the conception of the building 10 years ago there has been short stay accommodation. We were initially going to let the developer run our property short term but ended up moving into it. My wife’s parents are from Hong Kong and we lease out an apartment short term from the operator who has taken this issue to the Supreme Court and won. We love being able to rent one of these apartments, so that my wife’s parents can stay close to us and be more in a home environment rather than stay in a hotel. To be honest with you we get more problems with the long term tenants not the short stay ones and the management never seem to do anything about the long term tenants. We have prostitutes, drug dealers and bikie groups who reside in the building. We have never felt safe living in the building because of the seedy people that reside as long term tenants. We did have a problem with another short term operator who has since gone, they would have not have survived because they had poor business ethics but I don’t understand why the whole industry has to be shut down because of one bad egg. We don’t stop all the plastic surgeons just because one does a shoddy job! The other operator who are fighting this are extremely professional and from what I can see never cause any problems. What has stirred up the residents is the way the body corporate has handled the whole case, from putting up abusive and insensitive posters in the lifts, they are just so negative. Also they have taken it upon themselves to spend our money which amounted to around $122,000 which we were unaware of until we read about it in the papers. Then to find out that the body corp didn’t need to get involved and could have left it up to the council to sort out really infuriates us as owners, who were never consulted. The other problem is if they do the do change the rules, unfortunately that will be the end of Docklands and Southbank. Apartment prices will plummet, there will be an influx of apartments on the market for sale and rent. Forget about poor old New Quay that will turn into a ghost town and also don’t even think about staying on the Gold Coast as there will be no apartments to stay in.