Talking to Fabrizio Perilli last year felt a little like getting insider information from deep within developer land. We were interviewing him as part of our briefing sessions ahead of his appearance on stage at our (very funny) hypothetical to wrap up our Tomorrowland summit late last year.
As founder and managing director at Perifa, the development company he set up after heading up Toga for more than 15 years, Perilli offered intriguing insights into what really goes on and hinted at why so many outcomes are cause for dismay. Many of his industry peers are not so much arrogant and intending to ignore the community – they’re actually scared to talk to them. They think the community is hostile and won’t give them a fair hearing (well, for good reason in many cases).
But his point was that we might all get better outcomes with a bit more engagement. He suggested reprising the once popular charettes– those engagement chat fests where a range of community/industry voices could have their say and hopefully find some common ground. There’s a lot of value in developers giving back – providing something for the public in the spaces around their projects, he added.
We saw how clever that idea was when Central Park was developed in Sydney, with artists and a co-op given space for free or next to free. This strategy gave back in spades, way more than the generosity would suggest because the entire precinct was activated and declared cool, way before sales of the apartments got underway.
So, it was with a touch of optimism that we read that Perilli has been elected president of the Property Council’s NSW Division for the next two years.
Property Council’s acting NSW executive director, Adina Cirson said Mr Perilli brought almost 30 years’ experience in the property industry across several management, construction and engineering roles.
Let’s hope Perilli opens up some better communication channels. As we head deeper into the climate emergency, with property development at the front, we will need all the good open comms and collaboration we can.
The Property Council also announced 10 women and eight men were appointed to its Division council. The outgoing president is Kim Gregory. Michelle McNally, who is chief executive of Aware Real Estate was named vice president alongside Steven Bennett, CEO of direct property business Charter Hall was also elected as vice president.
Rocio Bona appointed new CEO at Decarbonology
Good to hear from Dr Rocio Bona in Western Australia again who helped with our event forays into WA far too long ago, including a Surround Sound and a Salon.
Bona has joined Decarbonology as chief executive officer. It seems like an ideal new gig after an extensive background in the ESG (environmental, social and governance) world, climate resilience, carbon management and public disclosure for large asset portfolios in the public and private sector.
Woodside notable for all the wrong reasons
Interesting to note that the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) reckons the announced changes to energy company Woodside’s board of directors shows it’s still not responding to investor concerns about its climate strategy.
Sarah Ryan and Dr Christopher Haynes have retired, Arnaud Breuillac has been appointed and Angela Minas is recommended to be appointed at the 2023 annual general meeting on 28 April.
ACCR’s lead analyst Alex Hillman said Woodside had shown it remains “stubbornly rusted on to its underwhelming 2021 climate plan, which was rejected by 49 per cent of its shareholders at the 2022 AGM. Climate change is a significant strategic governance issue for which the board bears responsibility, and this lack of responsiveness to material shareholder votes raises genuine governance concerns.”
The appointments “only amplify these concerns” he said, particularly that of long-standing TotalEnergies executive, Arnaud Breuillac.
And it was hard to see how “Ms Minas’ professional history in exploration, petrochemicals and the gas industry will lend itself to Woodside setting a strategy that is aligned with decarbonisation”.
Still on mining or mining threats to be precise, AECOM has welcomed the world’s first resilience strategy for a World Heritage Site, the Resilient Reefs Ningaloo Resilience Strategy, shared by the Western Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) on which AECOM collaborated.
Chief executive for the company’s Australia and New Zealand region Richard Barrett said “In the next 20-50 years, Ningaloo is predicted to experience a range of pressures related to human activity, climate change and biodiversity.”
Strata Community Association (NSW) was pulling out the big comms guns this week ahead of the state election on 25 March in the hope that David Chandler can keep doing his job as building commissioner.
“With Mascot Towers continuing to make headlines for all the wrong reasons and Jean Nassif’s property development company Toplace the subject of numerous complaints regarding building defects, it is vital that the incoming government commits to the strengthening and continuation of key property and building industry reforms,” the association said.
President, Stephen Brell reminded us all that more than 50 per cent of the NSW population is expected to live and work in strata schemes by 2040. This reinforces the case for building apartments that don’t fall apart at the seams.
The groups also said the emergency service levy might also need a review after insurance premiums leapt by 18 per cent a year for apartment residents.
The Emergency Services Levy (ESL) is a payment that helps fund certain emergency services in NSW. The ESL is an important issue because NSW is the only mainland state that funds its emergency services through a tax on insurance.
Other important issues included integration of electric vehicles and related safety issues. Lithium batteries are known to catch fire – fiercely, and emit dangerous “runaway effects, toxic and flammable gases and vapours, and leaking of hazardous materials,” the association said.
A stunning 39 per cent of new strata buildings have serious defects that cost around $331,82 for each building to fix.
And speaking of building materials
Watch out for a new safe and cheap building cladding technology coming onto the market if trials by materials tech company Livefield do well.
The product, the result of a collaboration with RMIT claims the cladding is not just cheap and structurally robust but is based on recycled glass, making it a nice way to divert the many tonnes of waste glass that wastefully ends up in landfill.
Lead researcher Associate Professor Dilan Robert said the cladding uses 83 per cent recycled glass, along with relatively low amounts of plastic binders and fire-retardant additives.
And it’s notched up key compliance requirement AS1530.1 set by Standards Australia.
The project is a collaboration between RMIT, Cooperative Research Centres Projects grants, the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Transformation of Reclaimed Waste Resources to Engineered Materials and Solutions for a Circular Economy (TREMS), Sustainability Victoria and other industry support.
Here’s some peer reviewed research on the product, Fire compliance of construction materials for building claddings: A critical review .
There’s also an article: A new technology of transforming recycled glass waste to construction components, published in Construction and Building Materials
Urban Taskforce in GIPA breakthrough
Isn’t it always amusing to see someone doing a little tit for tat trip.
Well that’s how we felt when the Urban Taskforce managed to get its very own GIPA – the NSW state equivalent of a freedom of information request or Government Information (Public Access).
The Taskforce the other day was crowing that the state had “not delivered a single consent under its much-heralded State Significant Build-to-Rent development reforms – until they saw our GIPA!”
And then they found one. A single “Build to Rent apartment consent through the state significant development planning pathway – two years after the reform was announced.
Our readers might recall the fracas last year when we had word the Taskforce was instrumental in the ditching of the Design and Place State Environmental Planning Policy at one of its lunches by its anointed planning minister Anthony Roberts. But then we could not, for love or money (well there was no money; just some polite requests; and these days probably not much love lost) get a copy of the speech.
Even though we keenly believed it was a matter of the public record and had to agitate to such an extent that a GIPA needed to be requested.
The Design and Place SEPP was modest – a few bits and pieces of trees in new developments in the hottest part of Sydney, out west – and yet that particular cohort of developers went ballistic.
Funnily, strangely, the thing that drove them wildest was mandating that roofs be light coloured, not dark.
But dark roofs don’t cost any more, we argued. (Unless Colorbond is suddenly short of light coloured paint). Not the point, apparently – this was architects’ ideological madness daring to tell the mates what to do.
Nope. The market shall dictate that.
Well, the market has done a brilliant job of delivering affordable housing, hasn’t it? Which is the point of the GIPA – to say that more approvals will let the prices tumble. We’re not sure the members would go along with building more apartments if the market prices were tumbling. They want to build more $1million+ apartments, you’d think.
And please let’s not look to ex Reserve Bank of Australia housing commentator/analyst Peter Tulip who is intent on bringing the US’s Demographia ideology to Australia: “ye shall build wherever you wish; and ye shall make the government build roads to follow”. Deregulate zoning and the market will solve our problems he says, quoted ad infinitum across the Nine daily newspapers.
These days Tulip has discovered the class factor as a way to win hearts if not minds: councils in the wealthiest suburbs, he says, are most successful at keeping a profusion at housing at bay through what he calls now a zoning tax. The answer, he says is as per above.
The Taskforce keeps spruiking those same tired old lines that keep getting repeated, sadly, in those daily newspapers without qualms: that “applications are bogged down in the system and we have a housing supply crisis.”
As if those two issues are in any way connected. Tim Sneesby has proved the first element is simply not true and the evidence shows that supply is not a fixed input as it might be in a factory producing rubber hoses.
Supply has a vastly different value and impact that’s dependent on location. Not all locations are equal. But if developers are pushing for more supply in the wealthy suburbs, it’s not because they’re happy to sell units at lower prices. They want to cash in on Tulip’s zoning premium.
If you don’t believe this please imagine the Urban Taskforce, asking its members if they will be happy to build into a market with falling prices.
No, they will not be.
End of story. The market will not deliver affordable housing.
Someone else has to.
But here’s a thought: how about Peter Tulip applies Mike Brown’s idea of deregulating zoning only for non-profit social and genuinely affordable housing providers?
Now that would be a nice intervention. Brown called it the Woollahra Buyers Club
Peter Tulip, time for you to meet Mike Brown.