April 25, 2025 • 57 mins
In PX130 our guest is Max Shifman, Chief Executive Officer of Intrapac Property, one of Australia's most respected private developers. Max brings a wealth of experience to the discussion, having worked across master-planned communities, regional housing projects, and complex urban redevelopments mainly along Australia’s eastern seaboard. His background in engineering and law, combined with hands-on experience in the development sector, gives him a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing the industry today.
In this episode, we explore what motivates developers, how public misconceptions impact the industry, the growing burden of red and green tape, and how political and media narratives shape outcomes on the ground. Max shares candid insights into the development process, the importance of long-term thinking, and the need for a more collaborative approach between planners, developers, and regulators. We also discuss innovation, housing affordability, the tension between idealism and pragmatism in city-making, and why Australia needs to rediscover its ambition for building new cities.
In Podcast Extra / Culture Corner:
- Max recommends the Netflix series Drive to Survive https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80204890, a behind-the-scenes look at the world of Formula One racing.
- Cam reflects on the power and abundance of Australia's natural coastal landscapes.
- Pete recommends the play Victory Over the Sun, a landmark 1913 Russian Futurist work that pushed the boundaries of theatre and art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_over_the_Sun
Episode PX130 was released on 26 April 2025.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This podcast is supported by VPLA.
Victorian PlanningEnvironmental Law Association.
Welcome to the Planning Exchangewhere we interview built environment
professionals who are doinginteresting work beyond the ordinary.
I'm Jess Noonan and I'm joinedby my colleague Peter Jewell.
Welcome to another episodeof Planning Exchange.
I'm your host, Peter Jewel, andtoday we're diving deep into
(00:22):
the world of urban development.
I. What drives it, why it's misunderstood,and how we can do it better.
We are joined today by our special guest,max Schiffman, the Chief Executive Officer
at Intra Pack Property, one of Australia'smost established private developers.
Max has a deep understanding of thedevelopment process, having worked
(00:43):
across a wide range of master plancommunities and housing projects.
He also brings insight into theregulatory and planning environment,
which shapes every decision adeveloper makes and co-hosting.
With me today is Cam Sisonstepping in for Jess.
Jess will be back.
She's just busy moving house.
(01:03):
Cam is a VO for me, a voice to many inthe property industry, and also joins us
as a new sponsor of planning Exchange.
So warm, welcome to you, cam.
Thanks, Pete.
Appreciate the opportunity to be here
today.
We'll, we're looking forward tounpack the world of development from
motivations to misconceptions andto reimagining what a city can be.
(01:23):
So Max, welcome to Planning Exchange.
You have been on the program before.
Can you start by telling us about IntraPack and your role with the company?
What kind of projects excite you most?
Yeah, thanks for havingme, Peter and Cam as well.
Look, intra pack's been aroundfor just over 40 years and we've
developed a reputation over that timeof developing some of Australia's
(01:45):
best residential communities.
Primarily.
We're heavily focused on the easternseaboard of Australia, but we also
have projects in the Northern Territoryand have previously worked in wa so
a fairly wide geographic footprint.
We've worked on greenfields, large scaleinfill sites, regional development,
and predominantly or historicallydid a lot of land, but increasingly
(02:08):
pushing more into the midden space.
Your terraces and townhouses are areal sweet spot for affordability.
Thanks, max.
Of those projects, which are theones that excite you the most?
The stuff that I really love is whereyou've got an element of complexity.
So we're renowned for takingon some pretty tricky projects.
And if I go back in time probably oneof the most successful it was a project
(02:31):
called Summerfield, which was in a suburbcalled Keysborough, which is about 25
minutes out of the CBD of Melbourne.
There it was originally market,garden land plus a series of other
things that really constrainedthe land before we developed it.
So you had chicken farms, you had dogkennels you had all sorts of things
that created all these concentricbuffers that meant even though the land
(02:54):
might have been zoned for development,you actually couldn't develop it.
And so we went out and actually boughtall those issues, if you like and
removed them from being bark barriers.
And we turned that intoa near 2000 lot estate.
Incredibly successful.
It went from, originally around2007, the first acquisition.
And we completed that projectin the middle of 2018.
(03:15):
And over that time won numerousindustry awards for landscaping, for
environmental excellence, for marketing,and won the residential development
of the year in 2016, Victoria as well.
Super successful.
One of the things that was reallysatisfying was just how well we
were able to build the community.
The community aspect was somethingthat, it was always there, but
(03:36):
became an increasing focus for usthrough the Summerfield development.
So we really worked hard tofoster a community group.
We helped sponsor them, we helpedto run events, and we made sure that
even after we'd finished the project,they were equipped to continue
doing those things in perpetuity.
And whilst the developmentitself was fantastic.
Beautiful.
The urban design quality was immense.
(03:57):
An enormous open space network aswell, beautifully connected, but it
was that community, those residentsthat bring, bringing them together was
probably the most satisfying aspect.
Max I'd like to ask you later onabout placemaking and establishing
an identity for new communities.
But I want more on themore personal level.
What drew you into thedevelopment industry?
(04:18):
What were some of the definingmoment or influences that led
you to become a developer?
I played Sim City a lot when I was akid, so that's probably part of it.
Played all the different versions.
I was probably enamored by theidea of, building roads and, seeing
how all that turned into places.
But I actually grew up in a developerfamily but at a very small scale.
(04:39):
My father was a builder.
He used to do small developments,so a pair of townhouses,
three or four on a block.
Did some apartments on occasion, butreally small scale through the sort of
Bayside area of Melbourne predominantly.
So I grew up in the industry.
I used to get my hands dirty andhelp him out on site when I was
younger in my school holidays.
So it was always there and.
(05:01):
Being migrants.
I said, I'd love to be in the business.
And they said, no, go and study.
So I studied engineering and law workedas a forensic engineer for a while
before I got back into the industry.
So I think it was always there.
But, maybe a circuitousroute to getting into it.
But, 15 years later it was the right call.
And Max, this episode focuses on whatmakes developers tick, both big and small.
(05:23):
So you, you've seen both, you're in a bigoutfit, but you've watched your father
and probably seen many smaller developers.
What do you think motivatessomeone to stay in this game
through the cycles, through thecriticism, through the complexity.
I think it's probably an elementof mad madness these days, Kim.
The way things are going at themoment you, you've gotta have this
(05:43):
sort of intrinsic motivation 'causeit's a really difficult business.
And it's difficult at both ends.
On the small scale you're talkingabout often very marginal projects.
And so you've gotta be able to getthrough them and get it funded, get
them sold, get them delivered, andyou haven't got much room for error.
I saw my parents.
Thankfully do pretty well over20 plus a year career doing that.
(06:07):
But not every project was amazing.
And that's the cycle that you have to run.
Sometimes the market's withyou, sometimes it's not.
So it's being able to be gearedup well enough to be able to
work through those periods.
And so then you apply that at a largerscale with the sort of stuff that we do.
And we're talking aboutgenerational projects.
Projects that can take at the lowestend, five plus years, but really
(06:30):
extending over well over a decade now.
And it's about setting things up, right?
Financially.
It's about having that long-term vision.
It's about staying the courseon what you wanna achieve, but
also being flexible to be able torespond to the market as it changes.
So that's something that you have anopportunity to do much more in a larger
scale project where you want to try andcreate that broad framework early on, but
(06:51):
also be able to roll with the punches,which might be market punches might be
financial punches but also just productchanges and demographic changes as well,
and being able to respond to that too.
Max, that's an interesting point.
We did interview a developer in Georgiain the States, and in their master plan,
they had a degree of inbuilt flexibility,so they could change components as things
(07:18):
the broader comm requirements changed.
What do you think about having thatsort of inbuilt flexibility into master
plans for bigger states, for example?
It's essential that you getthere to make better places.
The, one of the real challenges weface in Australia is that your planners
want to have everything resolved.
(07:40):
To a perfect degree upfront.
And when you are talking aboutthese decade plus long generational
projects, you actually don't wantto define everything perfectly.
Yes, you wanna have a frameworkaround where the core infrastructure
is gonna go, where your access isgoing to be predominantly where the
open space is going to be, but withinthat, you then want to be able to.
(08:01):
Have that ability torespond as things change.
And I'd have to go and reinvent the wheel.
And we have this real tensionnow in the system where you just
constantly ask for everything upfront.
And it's for all sorts of reasons.
It's to avoid mistakes.
Yes.
But it's usually justthe fear of the unknown.
And I think a misapprehension and amisunderstanding from particularly
(08:23):
decision makers and authorities aroundthe fact that you'd need to be able
to respond to changes over time.
Because that's scary, right?
They want to know everything upfront.
Every, they want to, they don'twant to get in trouble for approving
something that didn't go well.
But ultimately, the developersare ones who take the risk and our
reputation is linked to how good theplace is and how happy the people
(08:43):
are in it, and how the place thrives.
So I think we have a, an identity ofinterest in one sense, but the system's
not geared up enough to let us do that.
In a way that makes sense.
Speak sp
Speaking of identity Max,developers are, they get a bad rap.
They yet, everything from parksto shopping centers to housing
(09:04):
estates, they're built by developers.
Why do you think the industrystruggles with its image so much?
Oh, there's all sorts of reasons.
There's no question.
There was a period probably in the.
I'd say the eighties to early twothousands where some of the development
that took place wasn't the best.
I think that's probably fair.
And so I, I think the industrysuffered reputationally through there.
(09:27):
The, they called it the white SuperBrigade in some parts of the country
where developers would come inand, do a really basic job and not
necessarily deliver what they promised.
But I think we've become muchmore sophisticated as an industry.
But the sort of reputational aspectin the public hasn't really kept up.
I also think that there's been this verypolitical component to it too, where
(09:50):
politicians love to kick developers.
They love to blame othersfor all their mistakes.
And so we're a pretty easy fodder becauseat the end of the day, they've on industry
does big things, but it's actuallya relatively small number of people.
So you don't upset many people by, talkingabout greedy developers or dodgy builders.
But what that does over the longerterm is not only tarnish the name
(10:12):
of the people in industry, even thebest players, but also really has a
consumer confidence impact as well.
And so I think politicians particularlyhave done everyone a disservice by
trying to tar all developers with thesame brush and bring everything down
to the lowest common denominator.
'cause it means you can'tdistinguish yourself as a developer.
(10:35):
You're all treated the same.
But it also means that, weare, we're just easy fodder.
It's just easy to say, Ithink the alliteration helps
as well with dodgy developer.
They love using that term.
But very, it's very much aroundthat sort of political thing of kick
someone who they think is making money.
They're always evil.
Whereas in truth if you look at the numberof developers that survive more than about
(10:56):
a handful of years, it's a tiny minority.
So it's a really risky,difficult business, but that's
not appreciated in the way thatthe politicians talk about us.
I think Max, it's a very corrosivecommentary that we get about it's
very anti-business and developerscreate most of the things around us.
All the things that we most of us wereliving in, were developed by developers.
(11:19):
Most of the buildings, the shoppingcenters the shopping strips, everything
was built by essentially private sector.
But I, I did wanna ask you, you takea lot of pride in what your company
does when you pass by development,large, mid-size that you think has
gone poorly with a built formal orcommunity outcomes, what do you feel
(11:42):
and what do you think, you don't knowthe circumstances, but how do you feel
when you see something not so good?
I think firstly the question isthere a universal definition of
what is good or what isn't good?
If it is in the eye of the beholderI think idealists have a view of
what is good in a particular wayand others might say, you know what?
This is good enough for me orsuits my particular purposes.
(12:04):
So it's difficult, have a blanketview that something is particularly
bad and something is fantastic.
Obviously there's elements that are,call them semi universal, which is around
beautiful architecture and, great places.
But often the disconnect isbetween having beautiful places
and how much they cost people.
And prices are really.
(12:24):
Big challenge at the moment.
It's a national problem.
It's an international problem now inWestern countries where the cost of
delivering new housing is so disconnectedfrom people's capacity to buy.
And so judging something purelyon aesthetics or look and feel,
I think is the wrong measure.
Sometimes you've just gotta deliver somehousing for people, something that's
(12:45):
relatively affordable and the moreaffordable you wanna make something.
I'm not saying you should do absoluterubbish, but there are trade offs
that might mean it's a much morebasic outcome than what you otherwise
would love to see in an ideal world.
But economics matter.
And sometimes I think people are justscrambling to try and survive and
make a buck, which might mean theytake some shortcuts aesthetically,
(13:07):
or, which I guess, sometimes youluck out the market's fantastic.
You've got a great community, youhit a real niche and you're able
to keep reinvesting and doing more.
I, one of the things I like about doingprojects of scale is typically because
you've got that time with you you're ableto make that early investment and you see
the dividend for it in the longer term.
And you can think generationally.
(13:28):
I think it's much harder doing avery small project where you've
just got one chance to get it right,to put absolutely everything into
it early because it's not reallythere as a legacy for the long term.
We, as land developers, particularly theselarger scale projects, we only do as well
through the mid and later life cycle bywhat we've delivered in the early phase.
(13:50):
So it's actually smartbusiness to put more in early.
You put in the parks, you put inthe infrastructure, you put in
the great housing, and then thething becomes self perpetuating.
And maxie it, it's question in my mindis the planning profession and the
policy makers do you feel that those thatare regulating the industry or setting
(14:11):
up policy or making decisions aboutwhat's happening, do they understand
a developer or is there a disconnectthat it's it's never gonna change?
Or what are your views on that?
The bureaucracy versus the doers?
You know what, you need them, youneed all parties to be involved.
But yeah, I'm justinterested in your view of
that.
(14:31):
You talked to
politicians, but
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes it's not just the politicians.
I don't think the bureaucrats reallyunderstand what is involved at all.
They're very they the way thesesystems are designed is you end up
with very silo based mentalities.
You have someone whose job is justto look after environmental issues.
Just water, just traffic, justmaintenance, just rubbish.
(14:54):
You name it, everythingbecomes a little niche.
You don't have someone that's thereto look at the overarching vision
and outcome you're trying to achieveand navigate a path through it.
'cause in truth, someone whoserole is only to protect the
environment is gonna fight toothand nail to protect the environment.
No matter what.
No matter what the cost, no matter what.
(15:15):
You stop no matter how much youperverse, let's say the final outcome,
because their goal, their job, they'reliterally hired by definition to just
look after that particular thing.
And the same applies to thepeople who look after, turning
circles for rubbish trucks.
If you can't make a rubbishtruck, go forwards the whole
time a new estate, guess what?
You can't build it.
It's that sort of very narrow thinking.
(15:38):
That means you don't have thisoverarching perspective on what it takes.
And so I think the planning professionneeds to take a good look at itself.
The bureaucratic, the strategicand statutory side of it, they need
to be able to look more broadly.
And yes, you need to get feedback fromvarious experts at given times, but
ultimately you gotta decide what isthe outcome we're trying to achieve
(15:59):
and accept there are trade-offsand satisfying everyone to the
nth degree is actually impossible.
That's one of the reasons wenow have a planning system.
And it's, again, it's very Australianand I suspect it's the same
around the world, which doesn'tlend itself to any trade-offs.
And I'll use a quote from Thomas Sal.
He says, there's nosolutions, only trade-offs.
(16:21):
So if we're actually serious aboutbuilding more houses, it's going to
have to come at the cost of something.
You can't protect the environment,protect the amenity, protect
everything, and also build houses.
Something's gotta give.
And the question is what?
So yeah, you do need thatsort of more holistic view.
One of the thing I'd say is there's justno capacity systemically to actually just
(16:46):
let the right people get on with the job.
Because again, everything is broughtdown to the lowest common denominator.
If someone does somethingincorrect, they don't.
Put in the trees at the right time orsomething, everyone gets told, okay, now
we're doing things in a particular way.
And you're often having to dothings earlier than you'd want to
because you just wanna tick a box.
We're all very commercial, so we go we'lljust give in because it's cheaper to, put
(17:10):
in 40 extra trees or, maintain somethingfor a while, then actually fight it.
And so you end up with just thisdeath by a thousand cuts outcome.
And again, it's one of the reasonssystemically, we're now at a point where
the machine is working very poorly.
And it would take a lot of littleinterventions around the place
to actually try and unlock it.
(17:33):
Max, I'm reminder of that saying, don'tlet the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Yes.
It's, I, we're all shapedby our experiences.
And as you say, the motivation, and thisisn't we're, we wanna make things better
with bureaucrats because ultimately it'sfor the community's benefit that these
things work better and they don't havethis high cost impost on whatever type
(17:58):
of development we're talking about.
But how do we get thatchange, do you think?
What's the approach?
It doesn't have to be, you don't haveto have the solution right now, but
how do we get people speaking thesame understanding, the same language?
How do we do that?
Look it's difficult.
I think the starting point has to be whatis the outcome we're trying to achieve?
(18:23):
Because the bureaucratic systems,by definition, are about the
process, not the outcome.
We think very differently as privatesector, we go we wanna, turn this piece
of land into housing of some kind.
We work out what the highest and best usefor it, what suburban design principles we
wanna apply, what our objectives are froman affordability and price perspective.
And then we have to go off andconvince parties that have no vested
(18:47):
interest in saying yes to anything,that somehow what we've got in front
of them is worthy of consideration.
And they don't have thesame focus on the outcome.
They have the focus on theirparticular little, piece of the pie.
And so I would like to see, I thinkthe biggest bang for Buck would be
I've talked on online about the notionof a housing, a, someone whose job,
(19:12):
they're the decision maker, right?
They go, we, housing is the numberone thing we need to get done.
Yes, we have to get inputfrom all these other.
Areas, but ultimately we can'tlet one thing be the barrier
to getting housing completed.
There's always gonna be those trade offs.
So fast decision making, being clearon what the goal is and having the
(19:35):
authority to actually say, look, in thisparticular case I've heard you X, Y, and
Z, but we need to get this done and wehave to, give on this particular matter.
At the moment, all you really have thechoice of doing is having a court battle
with someone if you disagree with them.
And that's not a particularlyfruitful way of getting good outcomes.
(19:56):
And invariably what is all negotiationsfly out the window and it's just
battle stations for everyone.
And what's worse is I thinkauthorities, the moment you go down
the line of, using a legal rightto say We disagree with you, they.
Put pens down, they don't evenwant to try and negotiate anymore.
(20:18):
Ostensibly what you shouldbe doing is saying, look, we
need to protect our rights.
We're gonna argue this particular point.
It's open to everyone to comeup with an agreement prior, but
that's not how they operate.
The moment you take them on, theanswer is it's battle stations.
We're gonna throw the kitchensink at you and see what happens,
and everyone ends up worse off.
You spend a lot of money,waste a lot of time.
You end up with worse outcomesbecause there's not this there's
(20:41):
just no notion of collaboration.
So that's why I think if you had someonethere that was tasked with approving
or getting an approval, getting to yes,on all projects of a certain minimum
scale, just to get that speed into thesystem, I think you could get a lot
more done and a lot more, much moreattainable housing on the ground sooner.
(21:02):
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(21:24):
How does the media fit intoall this, do you think, max?
Because the politicians.
Who ultimately control theplanning systems, whatever.
They're very, a lot of their actionsare geared around the media cycle.
So what role, what responsibility doesthe media have in reporting these issues
(21:45):
?How can it be better done for everyone, not just the developers, but the
bureaucrats so they can have moreflexibility and, more, give more openness?
What do you think?
The media has a role andat the moment it's just two
geared up towards controversy.
So you can have the best proposal everor one that ticks court, 90% of the
(22:09):
boxes, and they will immediately goand seek an account of you because they
have to be perceived as being fair.
Which will be the NIMBYs orthe environmental protector or,
someone is just dissatisfied.
And they make it seem like there's muchmore opposition to something than what
there really is, but perception's reality.
So then all of a sudden thesqueaky wheels get the media.
(22:32):
The local politician,gets a couple of emails.
They suddenly have to scramble and tryand show that they're doing something.
And invariably, those political decisionsget in the way of good decision making.
I would love to see a media that is farmore supportive, if you like, of good
projects and good ideas, especially at atime like this when you're talking about a
(22:53):
national and international housing crisis.
So good solutions whichcan be delivered at.
I use the word attainable.
I don't even use affordable anymorebecause affordable is a misnomer.
Nothing's affordable, but you can deliverthe housing that people can purchase
and get into at a much better rate ofnot, I think the goal should be for the
(23:13):
me to say, this is actually the target.
We want to get more of this stuffand we should be more supportive.
I think that's highly unlikely.
I think the reality is controversyis always gonna get clicks and views
and reads, but it would be nice in ahousing crisis if the media was on board
with the good developers saying, we'reactually trying to solve this thing.
It's interesting.
I'm wondering whetherwe're seeing a permanent.
(23:38):
Shift in who the media are.
We, everything from TikTok tofragmenting our little bites, but
then to long form podcasts like thisand other forms all over the world.
I wonder if the narrative of negativenews cells has a chance of shifting
over the course of the time ahead ofus, because the change in the media
(23:58):
landscape and you engage a lot with it.
I'm wondering Max, whether you, maybethere's some hope in that shift.
I think there's a generational hope.
The social media generation has a lotto answer for and the negative as well.
But I think one positive is thatcertainly the millennials and below
are much more open to the idea of just.
(24:19):
Getting housing built, theyunderstand that supplies a
thing they need to get sorted.
They understand that you need todensify and change existing suburbs.
They're far less conservativeby nature, full stop.
And I think, yeah, the way social media'sinfluenced that cannot be understated.
I also think there's a little bit ofnaivety in how easily you can solve
(24:40):
those issues because social media,generally speaking, is very bite-sized
and doesn't get into the depth.
The only exception being those,some sort of longer form podcasts.
But it's a, it's such a complex business.
Building houses, building homesbuilding new communities, and.
(25:00):
I don't yet think enough people understandwhat's involved and the core role that the
development industry plays in doing that.
They I suppose the one, one real negativeI've perceived, and, we have a federal
campaign in Australia at the moment,but just, it is all the media that
I'm seeing, all the social media is soTarget that sort of, TikTok audience,
(25:21):
30 seconds, we are building this,we're building that, and it's really
attractive sounding, but it has absolutelyno depth or no base in reality as to
how they're gonna achieve said thing.
I don't know what it's like inother countries, but we've had this.
National housing target nowfor the best part of two and a
half years, the housing accord.
(25:42):
But we're gonna, we're planning, sorry.
The the accurate phase is to saythe federal government would like
to build 1.2 million homes acrossAustralia over five years, which
they won't do, but the narrative iswe are building 1.2 million homes.
That is the disconnect, right?
That it's attractive for a younger personon social media going, Hey, look, this
(26:03):
government's gonna build all these homesfor us when the best they can do is enable
the private sector, which delivers 96% ofnew housing to try and get to that target.
Now, current forecast suggestingwe, we only get to about 900,000
homes as opposed to 1.2 million.
But in this election campaign,every bit of media I see is we
(26:24):
are building 1.2 million homes.
And so I think it's it, you don'tget that depth and understanding
of what it would take to get there.
And nor do I think decision makersare ma doing the things you would
need to do to get to that target.
Maybe the industry needs its Netflixmoment like Formula One got, and there's
some sort of series that goes into theinner sanctum and watches some of the
(26:45):
absurdities that you observe firsthand.
And maybe that will bean audience, who knows?
Yeah.
But it seems to be, as you say, thecomplexity and depth of complexity.
If it could be interesting, maybe that
could happen one day.
Who knows?
Maybe I'm trying to lift theveil on a couple of those stories
on LinkedIn at the moment.
I'm only scratching the surface.
(27:05):
If,
Max, we'll get RyanGosling to play you in the
no, I thought I could play Ryan Gosling
You talk about the immaturity ofthe public discourse about housing
and it's not just, we weren't strayinto other fields, but it's about
that in a lot of public topics now.
The, it's like sugar hits that have no.
(27:28):
Bearing in reality and that's yeah,that I dunno what we do about that.
Hopefully we get some adults in the room.
But Max we've talked about trying toachieve high quality, livable communities.
What's your personal messageto the planning profession?
Not just here in dear Old Oz,but right around the planet?
What's your message to ourplanners listening out there?
(27:52):
I think you've gotta take away that veilof skepticism around all developers.
That's probably the starting point,because that to me, sets the scene for
the whole interaction, the whole outcome.
If you can look at developers as.
As people who generally a, just wanna havea reasonable business that can survive,
but b wants to create great places.
(28:14):
I think it changes the perceptionof who we are, what we're trying
to do, and therefore the waywe're treated through the process.
And if you look at it through thatlens, it might encourage some different
behavior around trying to get to asensible mutually acceptable outcome
rather than making it so adversarial.
So Max, on the flip side, have you amessage for the development industry out
(28:39):
there that they can work better with theplanning regime to get better outcomes?
Any suggestions?
Yeah.
Look I think we have to recognizethat we have a seriously critical
role as developers, as placemakers,as housing deliverers to deliver a
(29:01):
level of quality that people expect,anticipate, and to uphold that.
So I. Very much of the viewthat don't try and be too cute
with what you're delivering.
'cause it'll always be found out andthink about the longer term as well.
So if I bring it back to us, we'vealways got that longer term view and that
means that sometimes it make decisionsshort term that might not necessarily
(29:25):
be the absolute optimal from an economicperspective, but knowing that you're
gonna create that value longer term.
So if I maybe recharacterizeit, I'd say try and create
value rather than extract it.
Max, you previously mentioned theburden of red tape, but there's also
growing talk or reality of green tape.
(29:48):
Some people label it.
How do you see these layers ofregulation affecting the industry
and more importantly, the peoplewe're or you are trying to
serve?
Yeah the interaction between differentlevels and different colors of tape.
There's a whole bunch of other colorsthese days that you could talk to, but
it's related to what I was saying before.
(30:10):
It is you've got so many competingrequirements now across the planning
and housing system that it is actuallyimpossible to satisfy them all when you
look at a planning scheme these days.
And it will have objectives aroundcreating more affordable housing
and greater variety of housing.
And the same planning scheme, we'lltalk about protecting vegetation,
protecting environment, protecting,doing minimal earth works.
(30:32):
There's all sorts of things that come intoit, which you're at odds with the goal of
trying to create more affordable housing.
And so the more you layer thesethings on without that overarching
objective of, sorry it's notobjective it's overriding priority.
We need to ask those.
What is the priority right now?
And is it true to say that youmust protect every tree that might
(30:52):
exist on an existing suburbanblock, which then prevents you
from getting an optimal outcome?
Or is it reasonable to say, you know what,it's actually okay to remove some, as long
as you deal with the four and fauna, thatmight be, living on it in an appropriate
way, but that you replant somethingor that you replant a multiple of it.
But you create a much moreefficient use of the scarce
resource of land that you have.
(31:14):
I think we've gotta ask ourselvesthose questions quite seriously.
What we end up finding is usuallyit goes back the other way.
We've had cases recently in planningschemes where, because we were in a
particular zone, we had exemptions aroundtree removals on very large projects.
And then you have the councilsay, no, we still wanna have every
single tree approved by the council.
And so it just adds this extra layerof regulation, red tape, et cetera,
(31:38):
when you've already got a very intenseurban framework that you're working to.
And I ask, why do you bother doing that?
Why do you have this overarching frameworkand zone, which expects a level of
density and diversity and maturity in thedevelopment, but then add this additional
bit, which just adds time, money, andunnecessary headache for everyone.
(32:00):
Yeah.
I find it crazy sometimes makes thattrees in the middle of nowhere that
there's so much effort to protect them,whereas for this, the money it would
cost to protect that tree, you couldliterally plant 10,000 other trees.
Yeah.
And you could green and you could green.
So the, in terms of the bang for buck andanyway, but I, we won't, this is meant
(32:25):
to be a positive program Max, as cam.
So let's get on the positive.
Creating new communities,creating new identity in what
were once paddocks or just fields?
How do you create an identitywhere there's very little there?
(32:45):
Yeah, look it's difficult.
Some of it comes down to branding.
Some of it comes downto your urban design.
A lot of it comes down to your openspace network because it's one of the
sort of core things that people see aspart of your development and often use.
These new development frontstypically have a large proportion
of young families moving in.
So all those sorts of aspectsare really critical to.
(33:12):
We tend to look for a point of difference.
It's an authentic aspect of the site.
Summerfield, that sort ofmarket gardening history that
was a real point of difference.
We were able to then utilize in ourdesign, our marketing and our sales,
and it created that authenticityfor the place with something like
we've got a project in Lilydale inthe east of Melbourne called Kinley.
It's a former quarry.
(33:32):
And so that former quarry hasthis rich industrial history.
It's got some heritage building onit that we are retaining and will
be repurposing, and you can createa real sense of being around that
sort of historical aspect as well.
Now you don't get that everywhere.
Sometimes you have to workharder than others, other places.
But if you can utilize and maximizethe existing history or immunity on the
(33:55):
site, which might for example includemaintaining some of those trees, pair
that you were talking about removing.
But sometimes it makes sense because itgives you that sense of of longevity and.
It is something more thanjust an empty paddock.
Sometimes you don't have that.
That's when you have to work muchharder in, what the place is.
Urban design and creating thatsort of sense of community
(34:15):
within the new residents.
And max the challenge of housingaffordability that you've talked
about and the conflicting rules thatsort of make it very hard to achieve.
How do you, what role do you see privatedevelopers, big and small playing in
meeting this challenge and what support dothey need to actually, make a difference?
(34:40):
We're constantly thinkingabout affordability.
Again it's smart business.
If you can give people a productthat meets their needs today and
into the future at a price thatthey can actually afford to pay.
So obvious, but apparently it's notfor the people that decide around
how, the regulatory system works.
(35:01):
A lot of the time it's about being highlyregimented and also very prescriptive
around what the outcome should be.
And when you do that, it limitsyour ability to innovate with more
compact product or different productsconfigurations that might differ
from the norm because there isthis sort of historical conception
of how something might look.
(35:22):
And so it comes a little bit back tothat notion that you're trying to re
planners by definition want to resolveeverything upfront to the nth degree.
We say, let us over time work out whatwe're gonna do, which might mean we
screw some things up, let's face it.
That's the point ofexperimentation and innovation.
But there are councilsaround the country where.
(35:43):
And this is very prevalentin New South Wales.
You have minimum lot sizes of450 square meters to this day in
many parts of New South Wales.
So that's a very limiting factor whenit comes to delivering affordability.
So in other parts of the country,Queensland wa Victoria, you don't
have those same limits on lot size.
(36:04):
So you can deliver a much more innovativeand more compact product that can be
delivered independently but also getspeople into the sort of living space they
want at a price that reflects the factthey're getting a small land footprint.
And so there are some really bigmoves like that where you could just
get rid of minimum lot sizes and youwould automatically unlock a whole
(36:26):
series of of new innovative products.
But then the smaller you get, the morecomplex it gets to because then you've
got interaction with other parts of.
The regulatory systems thatdon't necessarily apply.
So you get into site coverages, youget into tree canopy cover, you get
into orientation and overshadowing allthese other bits and pieces, which if
(36:47):
you're trying to, tick the box on allof 'em again, makes it really difficult.
And so it limits the sort ofcapacity to try and innovate.
And then decision makers never wannabe the ones that say, yeah, we'll give
something a go, because they can gettr in trouble for, trying, trialing
something they don't get in troublefor just keeping the status quo.
(37:07):
So a more flexible system.
One, it's more open to innovatingaround stuff, not based on historical
perceptions of, what might havebeen small or affordable at the
time would make a big difference.
It's quite ironic that they'reworried about the impact of this
when they don't lose any money.
And you potentially couldyet you are prepared to.
(37:29):
Innovate and take risk toachieve affordability, but then
they're getting in the way.
It's sort
of weird.
It is.
Again we have an incentive to takerisks and try and succeed ultimately.
And sometimes you get it wrong,but you as a business, you live
and die by the decisions youmake and the outcomes you create.
And if there's a market for something youdo well, and if there isn't, you go broke.
(37:53):
In sort of government land I'm using, the,that as a, as an overarching description.
There is absolutely no incentivefor saying yes to things or for
letting people go outside the box.
So in fact, it by, it'sactually often the opposite.
And so you bring it backto the incentives, right?
If you create incentives that said,for to town planners or for directors
(38:17):
of planning and councils or stategovernment planners, that the thing we
measure you by is how much the averagenew dwelling costs and how quickly
it's built and, those sorts of things.
I think it would change the conversation.
At the moment, it's very muchgeared towards no being the default.
You have to convince me that I'm not gonnaget in trouble by saying yes to something
(38:40):
Max.
I think my thought on this hasalways been that in any planning
scheme or any planning code, thereshould be some written section
saying cities evolve cities.
Change over time , mistakes happen orthere's, there is a degree of grit.
(39:04):
Not everything is gonna be beautifuland perfect but and I think if
that was written into the planningcodes, so planners could reach to
that to give them more confidencein allowing something different.
I agree with you there.
And also I think one of theironies is that if you look at.
(39:27):
Pretty much every major city of theworld, particularly the ones that have
been around for, hundreds of years now,some of the most revered parts of those
cities are bits are things that youcouldn't build today based on regulation.
I think of something like middleor upper park in Melbourne, a very
sort of premium beach side, suburbsvery old, fairly close to the city,
(39:48):
full of tiny lots with tiny workers,clothes on that are some of the most
expensive housing in, in, in the city.
You could never get those things built.
Today, the street setbacks are too short.
You don't have side setbacks.
There's too much overshadowingorientation's probably
wrong on a lot of it.
You don't have tree canopy.
I agree with you, max.
Yeah.
Some of the most beautiful places thateveryone wants to live in would never get
(40:13):
approval under the current or even theplanning controls of the last 30 years.
Yeah, that's right.
And so it is funny how, we talkabout the livability of Melbourne,
the livability of Melbourne is basedaround a lot of old suburbs that
were built with basically no rules.
You look at Pran, south Fi, Abbotsford,these are old semi-industrial areas.
(40:33):
They've got redeveloped over time.
They've got tiny streetsthat you can barely drive.
A car passed if you've got one parked onthe side, got nowhere to put rubbish bins.
It's a mess.
It would never comply with all youryour modern planning regulations.
And yet there's some of the mostdesirable parts of the city.
And the same happens inall across the world.
(40:53):
Imagine trying to build Manhattan today.
May maybe we need to be a bitmore Victorian and less utopian.
I would love to
see that.
Yeah.
A lot of those areas were established.
Before the car had really dominated oururban settings and also benefit from,
intense public transport that takesthe pressure off the need for the car.
(41:16):
So the car's got the car.
I've had examples where, from anaffordability point of view, we said
we'd just like to park two cars downthe side of the property and have
a side setback and they can add thecarport later when they can afford it.
Unacceptable.
Must have an enclosed single car garage.
Why?
That's just what we do.
(41:37):
And a classic examiner, you go throughGlen Iris, which was probably built in
the 1940s, 1950s, and it's all the carsare parked down the side of the house
and eventually they've added a, an annexand then enclosed that into a garage.
But I initially, it wasn't the wholehouse, the end game, it was the start
of the house that you could build on.
None of these principlesseem to have a home anymore.
(42:00):
That, and again, the car seems to be sohigh on, I think the power of the traffic
engineers in council is all consuming.
That's, I don't know, I'd be interestedin your whole, whole take on cars and.
Yeah.
Look, there's no question thatwe are a country that's grown off
the back of the private vehicle.
And so we've had a. Since post WorldWar ii, a much more called Americanized
(42:25):
suburban development pattern.
And that's, in some ways it's broughtpeople closer to places they would
otherwise have never been able toaccess, so we can't, we shouldn't
throw the baby outta the bath water.
The car's been in an amazinginvention and done a lot of good.
But it does mean over time that we become.
More disconnected from other modesof transport that would let us
(42:46):
deliver more interesting places.
And I think to your point, somuch is driven by accommodating
the cars these days.
There's a default, you don't have thechoice anymore to say to have people
that say, we're, we are willing tonot have a vehicle, so give us a small
lot or a smaller dwelling that doesn'thave to accommodate the vehicle.
I think that's really the point, right?
(43:08):
It's planners don't give peoplethe ability to make choice.
State planners are reallybad at giving people choice.
We have, on the flip side, an obsessionwith densification now, which sounds
again really good from a utopiantextbook ideal, but is actually a
very unaffordable way of growingthe city at the moment with a whole
bunch of sort of regulatory settings.
(43:29):
And again, it's somethingyou're experiencing in other
parts of the world too.
So that sort of pattern of havinga. An intense CBD with suburbs
around it is virtually universal.
Even some of the denser citiesin the world, people say, oh,
again, I talk about Manhattan.
I love Manhattan.
Been there a lot.
Families don't live in Manhattanunless they're uber rich.
They live in the suburbsor they live in New Jersey.
(43:50):
People talk about Paris.
Yeah, you've got the old city, whichis beautiful, and it's very sexy.
Living in a 30 square meter bed,sit if you're a young couple.
But.
They've got massivesuburbs around the city.
And that's just how it is.
So if we were better with setting upa public transport network that was
reliable and fast and affordable, youwould keep a lot of those vehicles off
(44:13):
the road, but you could still build thatmore affordable style of development.
The, one of the real tragedies I thinkwe're seeing around Australia, and I'm
not sure what it's like around the world,but there's an increasing over investment
in established areas with infrastructureat the expense of newer si newer
suburbs and growth areas in the regions.
(44:35):
And it's.
I think very political.
It's very much about, Hey,look at what we're building.
Everyone can see it.
And that seems to be the box that'sticked rather than is this delivering
the greatest value for the most peoplewithin this particular city or town.
And so over time, I think over probablythe last two decades, we've seen that
over investment, in, in mega projectsat the expense of a lot more smaller
(44:58):
things sprinkled around our cities andtowns that would make a much bigger
difference, livability, accessibilitythan what we're seeing at the moment.
And so as long as we keep doing that, it'sthen easy to say those new suburbs are up.
They're terrible, they're congested,they don't have the infrastructure,
but governments have made a veryliberal choice not to invest in them.
If they flipped some of thatscript and invested there, they'd
(45:20):
be much better placed as well.
So that's the public discourse and theexamination of political decisions by
not just the media, but the universitiesand also think tanks and industry.
Associations, max, wheredo you go for new ideas?
So what sort of sources, or if thereis any particular places, but new
(45:45):
ideas, where do you go for inspiration?
Where's the wealth for you?
Or is there many wealths.
Yeah, look, great question.
So firstly I'm obviously the formerpresident of the EDIA, the Urban Develop
Initiative of Australia, which is thepeak body for Australian developers.
That's one of my corego-tos as you'd expect.
We have a National Congress everyyear, which brings together developers
(46:06):
from around the country, theyshare experience, but also bring
in speakers from around the world.
So you get that global perspective too.
Often it's around precinctsor around great open spaces.
You can tie in with some of thosewith site tours to see what some of
the most innovative projects are inthe particular city that you're in.
And that's a great way of just broadeninghorizon and seeing what, some of
(46:27):
the best practices and is evolving.
I have a particular interest in the sortof modular and prefab housing space.
We're not doing a lot of it yet,and I think Australia's still got a
long way to go before it becomes de.
It is going to be one of the thingswe have to figure out at some point
to make housing more attainable.
We can't afford to keep building theway we do, particularly for density.
(46:50):
We have a real challenge though.
It's challenge in, in,in the negative sense.
At the moment, modular andprefab housing is still.
A lot more expensive than whata volume builder can deliver
something for in a greenfield area.
And as long as that's the case, it'sjust gonna remain relatively niche.
It's probably less expensivethan a super high-end builder
(47:13):
building something architectural.
But for the sort of entry level, I don'tthink it's there and it's a long way away.
But there's an increasing interest in it.
And so I'm looking at internationalexperience in some of the startups
that are looking at that space.
A member of YPO.
So there's a lot of exchangesof information there as well
with businesses from overseas.
So that sort of helps me keepabreast of things and tech.
(47:36):
There's a whole series of differentthings and plus nothing beats
traveling and seeing the thingsthat you like around the world.
Ca cam any thoughts on what Max just said?
Look, it'd just be wonderful to have.
The concept of a model project, I'mnot sure that we really have that
opportunity given all of the, to a modelproject in terms of just being able to
(48:00):
experiment with things that are different.
You need, oh, it's almost likejust ring fence an area and just
say, show us what you could do.
Let's just see something different.
Just something that we can provethat there is a bit another way if
we just approach things differentlyand in a ringfence itself, it's
not gonna destroy the whole world.
(48:22):
But, that's some sort ofconcept of a model project.
If we don't have one now, I wonderwhat it could be, max, and what
if you did have this imaginaryring-fenced opportunity somewhere,
what would you try, what would you do?
Look.
One of the things Australiahasn't done for a long time
is actually build a new city.
Which is quite extraordinarywhen you think about the
population growth that we've had.
(48:43):
We are the most urbanized countryon the planet at the moment.
And so the fact that we haven'tbuilt a new city in Australia for
over 30 years tells you that we'renot really taking growth seriously.
To bring it back to Sim City, one of thethings I'd love to do is actually have
exactly that, have a, have somewhere whichhas some of the core connections that
you need around, particularly transport.
(49:05):
So it could be a, region whichhas a train station nearby or
at its heart is otherwise notparticularly highly developed.
And you would experiment.
You try to create a moderncity which doesn't rely on.
Having a private vehicleto take you everywhere.
Now, yes, you might need some somewhere,but if you made it a people centric
and active transport centric place tobegin with, then it opens up so many
(49:29):
opportunities around the urban design,around the form of building, around
being able to reduce the price point.
And if you have that sort ofsignificant connection into a major
urban center as well, then it canbe a real affordable dormitory that
eventually becomes its own place.
So I think that would bean exciting opportunity.
It's just so hard to breakthrough the status quo.
(49:49):
And even on projects that are lessrevolutionary, Z cam, like often we, we
come in and we want to try and experimentmore and do more interesting stuff,
but the process just wears you down.
So it becomes about justtrying to get past the finish
line and get something going.
You'd need a real culturalshift to try and get people.
(50:12):
Behind you and give you that latitude todo some things that are very different.
And I don't think Australia'smature enough as a country
to do it, unfortunately.
When's the last point in time?
You think that window hasha has been in this country?
That's a tough question.
I'm, I love history, but I don'tknow how far back my knowledge goes.
(50:33):
I guess the closest thing you have today,something like Springfield in southeast
Queensland, you could never get thatdone today because there'd be too many
trees on the site and there'd be koalasthat are possibly impacted in habitat.
But that was the closest to saying,here's a very large tract of
land, let's plan for the future.
For 30 plus years they've built aCBD, and there's now a train station
(50:56):
that takes you into Brisbane.
So it's probably theclosest I've seen to that.
And I wonder
what the.
What were the conditions at thetime that allowed that to occur?
Why could that happen then and not now?
I guess it just, we didn't have the sameintensity of of naysay, this I think, if
I'm not mistaken, that sort of kicked offin the early nineties, so it was before
(51:19):
the sort of massive ster of climateand protecting everything came in and.
Explore those things and,protect important stuff.
But I think it's gone too far theother way along the lines we talked
about where now if something existedsacrosanct and it should never be changed.
And so you needed that setting,needed a government at the time,
(51:40):
I said, yeah, we're bet to make along term investment into extending
a highway and putting in the railcorridors and other bits and pieces.
I guess it just had a political andan ec economic and a environmental
environment that let you think aboutdelivering something like that.
It's interesting, sorry to Pete tojust stay on this one, but the, you
(52:00):
mentioned that was seeded in the earlynineties, which is, for all intents
and purposes, probably the lasttrue Australia wide deep recession
where maybe those conditions help.
People be a bit freer in, in how muchthey're prepared to risk, they're prepared
to take in the decision making process.
When you really are at a point whatwe've gotta do something we haven't
(52:22):
really, yes, there's been, JFC, butAustralia didn't cop it too badly then.
Back in the early nineties, allof Australia really felt that,
especially in Victoria maybe thatwin maybe that time will come again.
Maybe.
It's an interesting observation.
If you zoom out into the broadeconomic environment now, we seem to
be at a place where you can't havethose sorts of scenarios anymore.
(52:44):
All the monetary theories, changeinterest rates, are now used as tool
to try and keep everything afloat.
And we do have a much higherunderlying population growth as well.
It underpins the popula, sorry, theeconomic growth of Australia now.
So I. Do you wish it for a recession?
No.
Absolutely not.
But it's maybe thatthings have to get so bad.
(53:09):
It's to that everyone goes,all right, we actually do need
to change what we're doing.
And I don't know what itwould take to do that.
I think certainly some of the broadereconomic stuff we're experiencing at the
moment around, record ballooning, debtstate and federally low productivity
in Australia, all these things arepointing to us heading in the direction
where someone's at some point gonnasay, actually, we do need a pretty
(53:33):
wholesale review of how we do things.
I don't think we're quite there yet, butwhen it happens I think you're right.
It could spur on a whole new generationof innovation and quick decision making.
Never wasted crisis.
Max, we've come to culture corner.
Podcast Extra, something thatyou've seen, read, listened
(53:54):
to, or experienced recently.
It could be a film, it could be a book, itcould be an event that left an impression
and might interest our listeners
actually touched on it before, butI just watched the seven series
of drive to Survive on Netflix.
I'm a Formula One guy.
And people have a mixed viewof drive to survive 'cause
they sometimes do manufacturecontroversy when it's not there.
(54:16):
But last year was probably one ofthe most exciting seasons in Formula
One that we've seen in quite a while.
So it was quite enjoyable seeing thetwists and turns, particularly, how the
driver's championship was disconnectedfrom the manufacturer's championship
for the first time in a while.
So I did thoroughly enjoy that in my inthe background in my morning gym workout.
(54:37):
But yeah big drive, survive.
And Formula One lover.
Cam, have you got somethingfor our listeners?
I am on holidays and I literally joinedthis podcast having put my 10-year-old
daughter into a pocket that actuallygave her a little small barrel.
So I'm inspired by theocean and the environment.
(55:00):
And as much as it, itneeds to be embraced.
It also needs to be accepted.
There's plenty of it in this country.
We're not short of it.
We're not running out of it.
It's everywhere.
If you go and get it.
Okay.
Mine is a little bit different.
I've I recently came across this playcalled Victory Over the Sun , it was
(55:21):
first produced in 1913 in what was St.
Petersburg.
And it was the first abstract theater.
And the thing is completely crazy.
And what made me laugh at just besilent watching parts of this, is
that we think we are the radical ones.
We think we are the innovators, butsome of the crazy stuff that was
(55:44):
happening in Czarist Russia, andthen slightly after the revolution,
which was of course a terrible thing.
But some of the artwork from Russianconstructivism, some of the first
graphic art is absolutely marvelous.
But this victory over thesun, it's a complete nonsense.
Play.
The music doesn't make sense.
(56:05):
It, people left the theater, theythrew thing at the stage, but it
was the, just some of the crazinessthat people are capable of.
So I'll put links on it, links onto it,something you can watch Max when things
get you down, you can just put victoryover the sun and have a good laugh.
Love it, Pete.
(56:26):
Very good.
Alright, max, you'vebeen a wonderful guest.
Thank you so much.
Cam, you've filled in for Jess.
Jess will be back listeners.
She's just got a lot going on withhouse moves, but thanks again fellas.
It's been tremendous.
Thanks Peter.
Thanks Max.
Thanks having me.
Thanks for listening.
If you would like to hear more of ourpodcasts, hit the follow button on Spotify
(56:49):
or the like button on SoundCloud orthe subscribe button in Apple podcasts.
Please also visit our Instagrampage, LinkedIn or website for behind
the scenes footage of our podcastsand to get the latest on upcoming
or recently released episodes.
If you have any suggestions orfeedback, please get in touch via
our social media channels or byemailing planningxchangeatgmail.
(57:12):
com.
This podcast is supported by VPLA.
Victorian PlanningEnvironmental Law Association.
Welcome to the Planning Exchangewhere we interview built environment
professionals who are doinginteresting work beyond the ordinary.
I'm Jess Noonan and I'm joinedby my colleague Peter Jewell.
Welcome to another episodeof Planning Exchange.
I'm your host, Peter Jewel, andtoday we're diving deep into
(00:22):
the world of urban development.
I. What drives it, why it's misunderstood,and how we can do it better.
We are joined today by our special guest,max Schiffman, the Chief Executive Officer
at Intra Pack Property, one of Australia'smost established private developers.
Max has a deep understanding of thedevelopment process, having worked
(00:43):
across a wide range of master plancommunities and housing projects.
He also brings insight into theregulatory and planning environment,
which shapes every decision adeveloper makes and co-hosting.
With me today is Cam Sisonstepping in for Jess.
Jess will be back.
She's just busy moving house.
(01:03):
Cam is a VO for me, a voice to many inthe property industry, and also joins us
as a new sponsor of planning Exchange.
So warm, welcome to you, cam.
Thanks, Pete.
Appreciate the opportunity to be here
today.
We'll, we're looking forward tounpack the world of development from
motivations to misconceptions andto reimagining what a city can be.
(01:23):
So Max, welcome to Planning Exchange.
You have been on the program before.
Can you start by telling us about IntraPack and your role with the company?
What kind of projects excite you most?
Yeah, thanks for havingme, Peter and Cam as well.
Look, intra pack's been aroundfor just over 40 years and we've
developed a reputation over that timeof developing some of Australia's
(01:45):
best residential communities.
Primarily.
We're heavily focused on the easternseaboard of Australia, but we also
have projects in the Northern Territoryand have previously worked in wa so
a fairly wide geographic footprint.
We've worked on greenfields, large scaleinfill sites, regional development,
and predominantly or historicallydid a lot of land, but increasingly
(02:08):
pushing more into the midden space.
Your terraces and townhouses are areal sweet spot for affordability.
Thanks, max.
Of those projects, which are theones that excite you the most?
The stuff that I really love is whereyou've got an element of complexity.
So we're renowned for takingon some pretty tricky projects.
And if I go back in time probably oneof the most successful it was a project
(02:31):
called Summerfield, which was in a suburbcalled Keysborough, which is about 25
minutes out of the CBD of Melbourne.
There it was originally market,garden land plus a series of other
things that really constrainedthe land before we developed it.
So you had chicken farms, you had dogkennels you had all sorts of things
that created all these concentricbuffers that meant even though the land
(02:54):
might have been zoned for development,you actually couldn't develop it.
And so we went out and actually boughtall those issues, if you like and
removed them from being bark barriers.
And we turned that intoa near 2000 lot estate.
Incredibly successful.
It went from, originally around2007, the first acquisition.
And we completed that projectin the middle of 2018.
(03:15):
And over that time won numerousindustry awards for landscaping, for
environmental excellence, for marketing,and won the residential development
of the year in 2016, Victoria as well.
Super successful.
One of the things that was reallysatisfying was just how well we
were able to build the community.
The community aspect was somethingthat, it was always there, but
(03:36):
became an increasing focus for usthrough the Summerfield development.
So we really worked hard tofoster a community group.
We helped sponsor them, we helpedto run events, and we made sure that
even after we'd finished the project,they were equipped to continue
doing those things in perpetuity.
And whilst the developmentitself was fantastic.
Beautiful.
The urban design quality was immense.
(03:57):
An enormous open space network aswell, beautifully connected, but it
was that community, those residentsthat bring, bringing them together was
probably the most satisfying aspect.
Max I'd like to ask you later onabout placemaking and establishing
an identity for new communities.
But I want more on themore personal level.
What drew you into thedevelopment industry?
(04:18):
What were some of the definingmoment or influences that led
you to become a developer?
I played Sim City a lot when I was akid, so that's probably part of it.
Played all the different versions.
I was probably enamored by theidea of, building roads and, seeing
how all that turned into places.
But I actually grew up in a developerfamily but at a very small scale.
(04:39):
My father was a builder.
He used to do small developments,so a pair of townhouses,
three or four on a block.
Did some apartments on occasion, butreally small scale through the sort of
Bayside area of Melbourne predominantly.
So I grew up in the industry.
I used to get my hands dirty andhelp him out on site when I was
younger in my school holidays.
So it was always there and.
(05:01):
Being migrants.
I said, I'd love to be in the business.
And they said, no, go and study.
So I studied engineering and law workedas a forensic engineer for a while
before I got back into the industry.
So I think it was always there.
But, maybe a circuitousroute to getting into it.
But, 15 years later it was the right call.
And Max, this episode focuses on whatmakes developers tick, both big and small.
(05:23):
So you, you've seen both, you're in a bigoutfit, but you've watched your father
and probably seen many smaller developers.
What do you think motivatessomeone to stay in this game
through the cycles, through thecriticism, through the complexity.
I think it's probably an elementof mad madness these days, Kim.
The way things are going at themoment you, you've gotta have this
(05:43):
sort of intrinsic motivation 'causeit's a really difficult business.
And it's difficult at both ends.
On the small scale you're talkingabout often very marginal projects.
And so you've gotta be able to getthrough them and get it funded, get
them sold, get them delivered, andyou haven't got much room for error.
I saw my parents.
Thankfully do pretty well over20 plus a year career doing that.
(06:07):
But not every project was amazing.
And that's the cycle that you have to run.
Sometimes the market's withyou, sometimes it's not.
So it's being able to be gearedup well enough to be able to
work through those periods.
And so then you apply that at a largerscale with the sort of stuff that we do.
And we're talking aboutgenerational projects.
Projects that can take at the lowestend, five plus years, but really
(06:30):
extending over well over a decade now.
And it's about setting things up, right?
Financially.
It's about having that long-term vision.
It's about staying the courseon what you wanna achieve, but
also being flexible to be able torespond to the market as it changes.
So that's something that you have anopportunity to do much more in a larger
scale project where you want to try andcreate that broad framework early on, but
(06:51):
also be able to roll with the punches,which might be market punches might be
financial punches but also just productchanges and demographic changes as well,
and being able to respond to that too.
Max, that's an interesting point.
We did interview a developer in Georgiain the States, and in their master plan,
they had a degree of inbuilt flexibility,so they could change components as things
(07:18):
the broader comm requirements changed.
What do you think about having thatsort of inbuilt flexibility into master
plans for bigger states, for example?
It's essential that you getthere to make better places.
The, one of the real challenges weface in Australia is that your planners
want to have everything resolved.
(07:40):
To a perfect degree upfront.
And when you are talking aboutthese decade plus long generational
projects, you actually don't wantto define everything perfectly.
Yes, you wanna have a frameworkaround where the core infrastructure
is gonna go, where your access isgoing to be predominantly where the
open space is going to be, but withinthat, you then want to be able to.
(08:01):
Have that ability torespond as things change.
And I'd have to go and reinvent the wheel.
And we have this real tensionnow in the system where you just
constantly ask for everything upfront.
And it's for all sorts of reasons.
It's to avoid mistakes.
Yes.
But it's usually justthe fear of the unknown.
And I think a misapprehension and amisunderstanding from particularly
(08:23):
decision makers and authorities aroundthe fact that you'd need to be able
to respond to changes over time.
Because that's scary, right?
They want to know everything upfront.
Every, they want to, they don'twant to get in trouble for approving
something that didn't go well.
But ultimately, the developersare ones who take the risk and our
reputation is linked to how good theplace is and how happy the people
(08:43):
are in it, and how the place thrives.
So I think we have a, an identity ofinterest in one sense, but the system's
not geared up enough to let us do that.
In a way that makes sense.
Speak sp
Speaking of identity Max,developers are, they get a bad rap.
They yet, everything from parksto shopping centers to housing
(09:04):
estates, they're built by developers.
Why do you think the industrystruggles with its image so much?
Oh, there's all sorts of reasons.
There's no question.
There was a period probably in the.
I'd say the eighties to early twothousands where some of the development
that took place wasn't the best.
I think that's probably fair.
And so I, I think the industrysuffered reputationally through there.
(09:27):
The, they called it the white SuperBrigade in some parts of the country
where developers would come inand, do a really basic job and not
necessarily deliver what they promised.
But I think we've become muchmore sophisticated as an industry.
But the sort of reputational aspectin the public hasn't really kept up.
I also think that there's been this verypolitical component to it too, where
(09:50):
politicians love to kick developers.
They love to blame othersfor all their mistakes.
And so we're a pretty easy fodder becauseat the end of the day, they've on industry
does big things, but it's actuallya relatively small number of people.
So you don't upset many people by, talkingabout greedy developers or dodgy builders.
But what that does over the longerterm is not only tarnish the name
(10:12):
of the people in industry, even thebest players, but also really has a
consumer confidence impact as well.
And so I think politicians particularlyhave done everyone a disservice by
trying to tar all developers with thesame brush and bring everything down
to the lowest common denominator.
'cause it means you can'tdistinguish yourself as a developer.
(10:35):
You're all treated the same.
But it also means that, weare, we're just easy fodder.
It's just easy to say, Ithink the alliteration helps
as well with dodgy developer.
They love using that term.
But very, it's very much aroundthat sort of political thing of kick
someone who they think is making money.
They're always evil.
Whereas in truth if you look at the numberof developers that survive more than about
(10:56):
a handful of years, it's a tiny minority.
So it's a really risky,difficult business, but that's
not appreciated in the way thatthe politicians talk about us.
I think Max, it's a very corrosivecommentary that we get about it's
very anti-business and developerscreate most of the things around us.
All the things that we most of us wereliving in, were developed by developers.
(11:19):
Most of the buildings, the shoppingcenters the shopping strips, everything
was built by essentially private sector.
But I, I did wanna ask you, you takea lot of pride in what your company
does when you pass by development,large, mid-size that you think has
gone poorly with a built formal orcommunity outcomes, what do you feel
(11:42):
and what do you think, you don't knowthe circumstances, but how do you feel
when you see something not so good?
I think firstly the question isthere a universal definition of
what is good or what isn't good?
If it is in the eye of the beholderI think idealists have a view of
what is good in a particular wayand others might say, you know what?
This is good enough for me orsuits my particular purposes.
(12:04):
So it's difficult, have a blanketview that something is particularly
bad and something is fantastic.
Obviously there's elements that are,call them semi universal, which is around
beautiful architecture and, great places.
But often the disconnect isbetween having beautiful places
and how much they cost people.
And prices are really.
(12:24):
Big challenge at the moment.
It's a national problem.
It's an international problem now inWestern countries where the cost of
delivering new housing is so disconnectedfrom people's capacity to buy.
And so judging something purelyon aesthetics or look and feel,
I think is the wrong measure.
Sometimes you've just gotta deliver somehousing for people, something that's
(12:45):
relatively affordable and the moreaffordable you wanna make something.
I'm not saying you should do absoluterubbish, but there are trade offs
that might mean it's a much morebasic outcome than what you otherwise
would love to see in an ideal world.
But economics matter.
And sometimes I think people are justscrambling to try and survive and
make a buck, which might mean theytake some shortcuts aesthetically,
(13:07):
or, which I guess, sometimes youluck out the market's fantastic.
You've got a great community, youhit a real niche and you're able
to keep reinvesting and doing more.
I, one of the things I like about doingprojects of scale is typically because
you've got that time with you you're ableto make that early investment and you see
the dividend for it in the longer term.
And you can think generationally.
(13:28):
I think it's much harder doing avery small project where you've
just got one chance to get it right,to put absolutely everything into
it early because it's not reallythere as a legacy for the long term.
We, as land developers, particularly theselarger scale projects, we only do as well
through the mid and later life cycle bywhat we've delivered in the early phase.
(13:50):
So it's actually smartbusiness to put more in early.
You put in the parks, you put inthe infrastructure, you put in
the great housing, and then thething becomes self perpetuating.
And maxie it, it's question in my mindis the planning profession and the
policy makers do you feel that those thatare regulating the industry or setting
(14:11):
up policy or making decisions aboutwhat's happening, do they understand
a developer or is there a disconnectthat it's it's never gonna change?
Or what are your views on that?
The bureaucracy versus the doers?
You know what, you need them, youneed all parties to be involved.
But yeah, I'm justinterested in your view of
that.
(14:31):
You talked to
politicians, but
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes it's not just the politicians.
I don't think the bureaucrats reallyunderstand what is involved at all.
They're very they the way thesesystems are designed is you end up
with very silo based mentalities.
You have someone whose job is justto look after environmental issues.
Just water, just traffic, justmaintenance, just rubbish.
(14:54):
You name it, everythingbecomes a little niche.
You don't have someone that's thereto look at the overarching vision
and outcome you're trying to achieveand navigate a path through it.
'cause in truth, someone whoserole is only to protect the
environment is gonna fight toothand nail to protect the environment.
No matter what.
No matter what the cost, no matter what.
(15:15):
You stop no matter how much youperverse, let's say the final outcome,
because their goal, their job, they'reliterally hired by definition to just
look after that particular thing.
And the same applies to thepeople who look after, turning
circles for rubbish trucks.
If you can't make a rubbishtruck, go forwards the whole
time a new estate, guess what?
You can't build it.
It's that sort of very narrow thinking.
(15:38):
That means you don't have thisoverarching perspective on what it takes.
And so I think the planning professionneeds to take a good look at itself.
The bureaucratic, the strategicand statutory side of it, they need
to be able to look more broadly.
And yes, you need to get feedback fromvarious experts at given times, but
ultimately you gotta decide what isthe outcome we're trying to achieve
(15:59):
and accept there are trade-offsand satisfying everyone to the
nth degree is actually impossible.
That's one of the reasons wenow have a planning system.
And it's, again, it's very Australianand I suspect it's the same
around the world, which doesn'tlend itself to any trade-offs.
And I'll use a quote from Thomas Sal.
He says, there's nosolutions, only trade-offs.
(16:21):
So if we're actually serious aboutbuilding more houses, it's going to
have to come at the cost of something.
You can't protect the environment,protect the amenity, protect
everything, and also build houses.
Something's gotta give.
And the question is what?
So yeah, you do need thatsort of more holistic view.
One of the thing I'd say is there's justno capacity systemically to actually just
(16:46):
let the right people get on with the job.
Because again, everything is broughtdown to the lowest common denominator.
If someone does somethingincorrect, they don't.
Put in the trees at the right time orsomething, everyone gets told, okay, now
we're doing things in a particular way.
And you're often having to dothings earlier than you'd want to
because you just wanna tick a box.
We're all very commercial, so we go we'lljust give in because it's cheaper to, put
(17:10):
in 40 extra trees or, maintain somethingfor a while, then actually fight it.
And so you end up with just thisdeath by a thousand cuts outcome.
And again, it's one of the reasonssystemically, we're now at a point where
the machine is working very poorly.
And it would take a lot of littleinterventions around the place
to actually try and unlock it.
(17:33):
Max, I'm reminder of that saying, don'tlet the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Yes.
It's, I, we're all shapedby our experiences.
And as you say, the motivation, and thisisn't we're, we wanna make things better
with bureaucrats because ultimately it'sfor the community's benefit that these
things work better and they don't havethis high cost impost on whatever type
(17:58):
of development we're talking about.
But how do we get thatchange, do you think?
What's the approach?
It doesn't have to be, you don't haveto have the solution right now, but
how do we get people speaking thesame understanding, the same language?
How do we do that?
Look it's difficult.
I think the starting point has to be whatis the outcome we're trying to achieve?
(18:23):
Because the bureaucratic systems,by definition, are about the
process, not the outcome.
We think very differently as privatesector, we go we wanna, turn this piece
of land into housing of some kind.
We work out what the highest and best usefor it, what suburban design principles we
wanna apply, what our objectives are froman affordability and price perspective.
And then we have to go off andconvince parties that have no vested
(18:47):
interest in saying yes to anything,that somehow what we've got in front
of them is worthy of consideration.
And they don't have thesame focus on the outcome.
They have the focus on theirparticular little, piece of the pie.
And so I would like to see, I thinkthe biggest bang for Buck would be
I've talked on online about the notionof a housing, a, someone whose job,
(19:12):
they're the decision maker, right?
They go, we, housing is the numberone thing we need to get done.
Yes, we have to get inputfrom all these other.
Areas, but ultimately we can'tlet one thing be the barrier
to getting housing completed.
There's always gonna be those trade offs.
So fast decision making, being clearon what the goal is and having the
(19:35):
authority to actually say, look, in thisparticular case I've heard you X, Y, and
Z, but we need to get this done and wehave to, give on this particular matter.
At the moment, all you really have thechoice of doing is having a court battle
with someone if you disagree with them.
And that's not a particularlyfruitful way of getting good outcomes.
(19:56):
And invariably what is all negotiationsfly out the window and it's just
battle stations for everyone.
And what's worse is I thinkauthorities, the moment you go down
the line of, using a legal rightto say We disagree with you, they.
Put pens down, they don't evenwant to try and negotiate anymore.
(20:18):
Ostensibly what you shouldbe doing is saying, look, we
need to protect our rights.
We're gonna argue this particular point.
It's open to everyone to comeup with an agreement prior, but
that's not how they operate.
The moment you take them on, theanswer is it's battle stations.
We're gonna throw the kitchensink at you and see what happens,
and everyone ends up worse off.
You spend a lot of money,waste a lot of time.
You end up with worse outcomesbecause there's not this there's
(20:41):
just no notion of collaboration.
So that's why I think if you had someonethere that was tasked with approving
or getting an approval, getting to yes,on all projects of a certain minimum
scale, just to get that speed into thesystem, I think you could get a lot
more done and a lot more, much moreattainable housing on the ground sooner.
(21:02):
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(21:24):
How does the media fit intoall this, do you think, max?
Because the politicians.
Who ultimately control theplanning systems, whatever.
They're very, a lot of their actionsare geared around the media cycle.
So what role, what responsibility doesthe media have in reporting these issues
(21:45):
?How can it be better done for everyone, not just the developers, but the
bureaucrats so they can have moreflexibility and, more, give more openness?
What do you think?
The media has a role andat the moment it's just two
geared up towards controversy.
So you can have the best proposal everor one that ticks court, 90% of the
(22:09):
boxes, and they will immediately goand seek an account of you because they
have to be perceived as being fair.
Which will be the NIMBYs orthe environmental protector or,
someone is just dissatisfied.
And they make it seem like there's muchmore opposition to something than what
there really is, but perception's reality.
So then all of a sudden thesqueaky wheels get the media.
(22:32):
The local politician,gets a couple of emails.
They suddenly have to scramble and tryand show that they're doing something.
And invariably, those political decisionsget in the way of good decision making.
I would love to see a media that is farmore supportive, if you like, of good
projects and good ideas, especially at atime like this when you're talking about a
(22:53):
national and international housing crisis.
So good solutions whichcan be delivered at.
I use the word attainable.
I don't even use affordable anymorebecause affordable is a misnomer.
Nothing's affordable, but you can deliverthe housing that people can purchase
and get into at a much better rate ofnot, I think the goal should be for the
(23:13):
me to say, this is actually the target.
We want to get more of this stuffand we should be more supportive.
I think that's highly unlikely.
I think the reality is controversyis always gonna get clicks and views
and reads, but it would be nice in ahousing crisis if the media was on board
with the good developers saying, we'reactually trying to solve this thing.
It's interesting.
I'm wondering whetherwe're seeing a permanent.
(23:38):
Shift in who the media are.
We, everything from TikTok tofragmenting our little bites, but
then to long form podcasts like thisand other forms all over the world.
I wonder if the narrative of negativenews cells has a chance of shifting
over the course of the time ahead ofus, because the change in the media
(23:58):
landscape and you engage a lot with it.
I'm wondering Max, whether you, maybethere's some hope in that shift.
I think there's a generational hope.
The social media generation has a lotto answer for and the negative as well.
But I think one positive is thatcertainly the millennials and below
are much more open to the idea of just.
(24:19):
Getting housing built, theyunderstand that supplies a
thing they need to get sorted.
They understand that you need todensify and change existing suburbs.
They're far less conservativeby nature, full stop.
And I think, yeah, the way social media'sinfluenced that cannot be understated.
I also think there's a little bit ofnaivety in how easily you can solve
(24:40):
those issues because social media,generally speaking, is very bite-sized
and doesn't get into the depth.
The only exception being those,some sort of longer form podcasts.
But it's a, it's such a complex business.
Building houses, building homesbuilding new communities, and.
(25:00):
I don't yet think enough people understandwhat's involved and the core role that the
development industry plays in doing that.
They I suppose the one, one real negativeI've perceived, and, we have a federal
campaign in Australia at the moment,but just, it is all the media that
I'm seeing, all the social media is soTarget that sort of, TikTok audience,
(25:21):
30 seconds, we are building this,we're building that, and it's really
attractive sounding, but it has absolutelyno depth or no base in reality as to
how they're gonna achieve said thing.
I don't know what it's like inother countries, but we've had this.
National housing target nowfor the best part of two and a
half years, the housing accord.
(25:42):
But we're gonna, we're planning, sorry.
The the accurate phase is to saythe federal government would like
to build 1.2 million homes acrossAustralia over five years, which
they won't do, but the narrative iswe are building 1.2 million homes.
That is the disconnect, right?
That it's attractive for a younger personon social media going, Hey, look, this
(26:03):
government's gonna build all these homesfor us when the best they can do is enable
the private sector, which delivers 96% ofnew housing to try and get to that target.
Now, current forecast suggestingwe, we only get to about 900,000
homes as opposed to 1.2 million.
But in this election campaign,every bit of media I see is we
(26:24):
are building 1.2 million homes.
And so I think it's it, you don'tget that depth and understanding
of what it would take to get there.
And nor do I think decision makersare ma doing the things you would
need to do to get to that target.
Maybe the industry needs its Netflixmoment like Formula One got, and there's
some sort of series that goes into theinner sanctum and watches some of the
(26:45):
absurdities that you observe firsthand.
And maybe that will bean audience, who knows?
Yeah.
But it seems to be, as you say, thecomplexity and depth of complexity.
If it could be interesting, maybe that
could happen one day.
Who knows?
Maybe I'm trying to lift theveil on a couple of those stories
on LinkedIn at the moment.
I'm only scratching the surface.
(27:05):
If,
Max, we'll get RyanGosling to play you in the
no, I thought I could play Ryan Gosling
You talk about the immaturity ofthe public discourse about housing
and it's not just, we weren't strayinto other fields, but it's about
that in a lot of public topics now.
The, it's like sugar hits that have no.
(27:28):
Bearing in reality and that's yeah,that I dunno what we do about that.
Hopefully we get some adults in the room.
But Max we've talked about trying toachieve high quality, livable communities.
What's your personal messageto the planning profession?
Not just here in dear Old Oz,but right around the planet?
What's your message to ourplanners listening out there?
(27:52):
I think you've gotta take away that veilof skepticism around all developers.
That's probably the starting point,because that to me, sets the scene for
the whole interaction, the whole outcome.
If you can look at developers as.
As people who generally a, just wanna havea reasonable business that can survive,
but b wants to create great places.
(28:14):
I think it changes the perceptionof who we are, what we're trying
to do, and therefore the waywe're treated through the process.
And if you look at it through thatlens, it might encourage some different
behavior around trying to get to asensible mutually acceptable outcome
rather than making it so adversarial.
So Max, on the flip side, have you amessage for the development industry out
(28:39):
there that they can work better with theplanning regime to get better outcomes?
Any suggestions?
Yeah.
Look I think we have to recognizethat we have a seriously critical
role as developers, as placemakers,as housing deliverers to deliver a
(29:01):
level of quality that people expect,anticipate, and to uphold that.
So I. Very much of the viewthat don't try and be too cute
with what you're delivering.
'cause it'll always be found out andthink about the longer term as well.
So if I bring it back to us, we'vealways got that longer term view and that
means that sometimes it make decisionsshort term that might not necessarily
(29:25):
be the absolute optimal from an economicperspective, but knowing that you're
gonna create that value longer term.
So if I maybe recharacterizeit, I'd say try and create
value rather than extract it.
Max, you previously mentioned theburden of red tape, but there's also
growing talk or reality of green tape.
(29:48):
Some people label it.
How do you see these layers ofregulation affecting the industry
and more importantly, the peoplewe're or you are trying to
serve?
Yeah the interaction between differentlevels and different colors of tape.
There's a whole bunch of other colorsthese days that you could talk to, but
it's related to what I was saying before.
(30:10):
It is you've got so many competingrequirements now across the planning
and housing system that it is actuallyimpossible to satisfy them all when you
look at a planning scheme these days.
And it will have objectives aroundcreating more affordable housing
and greater variety of housing.
And the same planning scheme, we'lltalk about protecting vegetation,
protecting environment, protecting,doing minimal earth works.
(30:32):
There's all sorts of things that come intoit, which you're at odds with the goal of
trying to create more affordable housing.
And so the more you layer thesethings on without that overarching
objective of, sorry it's notobjective it's overriding priority.
We need to ask those.
What is the priority right now?
And is it true to say that youmust protect every tree that might
(30:52):
exist on an existing suburbanblock, which then prevents you
from getting an optimal outcome?
Or is it reasonable to say, you know what,it's actually okay to remove some, as long
as you deal with the four and fauna, thatmight be, living on it in an appropriate
way, but that you replant somethingor that you replant a multiple of it.
But you create a much moreefficient use of the scarce
resource of land that you have.
(31:14):
I think we've gotta ask ourselvesthose questions quite seriously.
What we end up finding is usuallyit goes back the other way.
We've had cases recently in planningschemes where, because we were in a
particular zone, we had exemptions aroundtree removals on very large projects.
And then you have the councilsay, no, we still wanna have every
single tree approved by the council.
And so it just adds this extra layerof regulation, red tape, et cetera,
(31:38):
when you've already got a very intenseurban framework that you're working to.
And I ask, why do you bother doing that?
Why do you have this overarching frameworkand zone, which expects a level of
density and diversity and maturity in thedevelopment, but then add this additional
bit, which just adds time, money, andunnecessary headache for everyone.
(32:00):
Yeah.
I find it crazy sometimes makes thattrees in the middle of nowhere that
there's so much effort to protect them,whereas for this, the money it would
cost to protect that tree, you couldliterally plant 10,000 other trees.
Yeah.
And you could green and you could green.
So the, in terms of the bang for buck andanyway, but I, we won't, this is meant
(32:25):
to be a positive program Max, as cam.
So let's get on the positive.
Creating new communities,creating new identity in what
were once paddocks or just fields?
How do you create an identitywhere there's very little there?
(32:45):
Yeah, look it's difficult.
Some of it comes down to branding.
Some of it comes downto your urban design.
A lot of it comes down to your openspace network because it's one of the
sort of core things that people see aspart of your development and often use.
These new development frontstypically have a large proportion
of young families moving in.
So all those sorts of aspectsare really critical to.
(33:12):
We tend to look for a point of difference.
It's an authentic aspect of the site.
Summerfield, that sort ofmarket gardening history that
was a real point of difference.
We were able to then utilize in ourdesign, our marketing and our sales,
and it created that authenticityfor the place with something like
we've got a project in Lilydale inthe east of Melbourne called Kinley.
It's a former quarry.
(33:32):
And so that former quarry hasthis rich industrial history.
It's got some heritage building onit that we are retaining and will
be repurposing, and you can createa real sense of being around that
sort of historical aspect as well.
Now you don't get that everywhere.
Sometimes you have to workharder than others, other places.
But if you can utilize and maximizethe existing history or immunity on the
(33:55):
site, which might for example includemaintaining some of those trees, pair
that you were talking about removing.
But sometimes it makes sense because itgives you that sense of of longevity and.
It is something more thanjust an empty paddock.
Sometimes you don't have that.
That's when you have to work muchharder in, what the place is.
Urban design and creating thatsort of sense of community
(34:15):
within the new residents.
And max the challenge of housingaffordability that you've talked
about and the conflicting rules thatsort of make it very hard to achieve.
How do you, what role do you see privatedevelopers, big and small playing in
meeting this challenge and what support dothey need to actually, make a difference?
(34:40):
We're constantly thinkingabout affordability.
Again it's smart business.
If you can give people a productthat meets their needs today and
into the future at a price thatthey can actually afford to pay.
So obvious, but apparently it's notfor the people that decide around
how, the regulatory system works.
(35:01):
A lot of the time it's about being highlyregimented and also very prescriptive
around what the outcome should be.
And when you do that, it limitsyour ability to innovate with more
compact product or different productsconfigurations that might differ
from the norm because there isthis sort of historical conception
of how something might look.
(35:22):
And so it comes a little bit back tothat notion that you're trying to re
planners by definition want to resolveeverything upfront to the nth degree.
We say, let us over time work out whatwe're gonna do, which might mean we
screw some things up, let's face it.
That's the point ofexperimentation and innovation.
But there are councilsaround the country where.
(35:43):
And this is very prevalentin New South Wales.
You have minimum lot sizes of450 square meters to this day in
many parts of New South Wales.
So that's a very limiting factor whenit comes to delivering affordability.
So in other parts of the country,Queensland wa Victoria, you don't
have those same limits on lot size.
(36:04):
So you can deliver a much more innovativeand more compact product that can be
delivered independently but also getspeople into the sort of living space they
want at a price that reflects the factthey're getting a small land footprint.
And so there are some really bigmoves like that where you could just
get rid of minimum lot sizes and youwould automatically unlock a whole
(36:26):
series of of new innovative products.
But then the smaller you get, the morecomplex it gets to because then you've
got interaction with other parts of.
The regulatory systems thatdon't necessarily apply.
So you get into site coverages, youget into tree canopy cover, you get
into orientation and overshadowing allthese other bits and pieces, which if
(36:47):
you're trying to, tick the box on allof 'em again, makes it really difficult.
And so it limits the sort ofcapacity to try and innovate.
And then decision makers never wannabe the ones that say, yeah, we'll give
something a go, because they can gettr in trouble for, trying, trialing
something they don't get in troublefor just keeping the status quo.
(37:07):
So a more flexible system.
One, it's more open to innovatingaround stuff, not based on historical
perceptions of, what might havebeen small or affordable at the
time would make a big difference.
It's quite ironic that they'reworried about the impact of this
when they don't lose any money.
And you potentially couldyet you are prepared to.
(37:29):
Innovate and take risk toachieve affordability, but then
they're getting in the way.
It's sort
of weird.
It is.
Again we have an incentive to takerisks and try and succeed ultimately.
And sometimes you get it wrong,but you as a business, you live
and die by the decisions youmake and the outcomes you create.
And if there's a market for something youdo well, and if there isn't, you go broke.
(37:53):
In sort of government land I'm using, the,that as a, as an overarching description.
There is absolutely no incentivefor saying yes to things or for
letting people go outside the box.
So in fact, it by, it'sactually often the opposite.
And so you bring it backto the incentives, right?
If you create incentives that said,for to town planners or for directors
(38:17):
of planning and councils or stategovernment planners, that the thing we
measure you by is how much the averagenew dwelling costs and how quickly
it's built and, those sorts of things.
I think it would change the conversation.
At the moment, it's very muchgeared towards no being the default.
You have to convince me that I'm not gonnaget in trouble by saying yes to something
(38:40):
Max.
I think my thought on this hasalways been that in any planning
scheme or any planning code, thereshould be some written section
saying cities evolve cities.
Change over time , mistakes happen orthere's, there is a degree of grit.
(39:04):
Not everything is gonna be beautifuland perfect but and I think if
that was written into the planningcodes, so planners could reach to
that to give them more confidencein allowing something different.
I agree with you there.
And also I think one of theironies is that if you look at.
(39:27):
Pretty much every major city of theworld, particularly the ones that have
been around for, hundreds of years now,some of the most revered parts of those
cities are bits are things that youcouldn't build today based on regulation.
I think of something like middleor upper park in Melbourne, a very
sort of premium beach side, suburbsvery old, fairly close to the city,
(39:48):
full of tiny lots with tiny workers,clothes on that are some of the most
expensive housing in, in, in the city.
You could never get those things built.
Today, the street setbacks are too short.
You don't have side setbacks.
There's too much overshadowingorientation's probably
wrong on a lot of it.
You don't have tree canopy.
I agree with you, max.
Yeah.
Some of the most beautiful places thateveryone wants to live in would never get
(40:13):
approval under the current or even theplanning controls of the last 30 years.
Yeah, that's right.
And so it is funny how, we talkabout the livability of Melbourne,
the livability of Melbourne is basedaround a lot of old suburbs that
were built with basically no rules.
You look at Pran, south Fi, Abbotsford,these are old semi-industrial areas.
(40:33):
They've got redeveloped over time.
They've got tiny streetsthat you can barely drive.
A car passed if you've got one parked onthe side, got nowhere to put rubbish bins.
It's a mess.
It would never comply with all youryour modern planning regulations.
And yet there's some of the mostdesirable parts of the city.
And the same happens inall across the world.
(40:53):
Imagine trying to build Manhattan today.
May maybe we need to be a bitmore Victorian and less utopian.
I would love to
see that.
Yeah.
A lot of those areas were established.
Before the car had really dominated oururban settings and also benefit from,
intense public transport that takesthe pressure off the need for the car.
(41:16):
So the car's got the car.
I've had examples where, from anaffordability point of view, we said
we'd just like to park two cars downthe side of the property and have
a side setback and they can add thecarport later when they can afford it.
Unacceptable.
Must have an enclosed single car garage.
Why?
That's just what we do.
(41:37):
And a classic examiner, you go throughGlen Iris, which was probably built in
the 1940s, 1950s, and it's all the carsare parked down the side of the house
and eventually they've added a, an annexand then enclosed that into a garage.
But I initially, it wasn't the wholehouse, the end game, it was the start
of the house that you could build on.
None of these principlesseem to have a home anymore.
(42:00):
That, and again, the car seems to be sohigh on, I think the power of the traffic
engineers in council is all consuming.
That's, I don't know, I'd be interestedin your whole, whole take on cars and.
Yeah.
Look, there's no question thatwe are a country that's grown off
the back of the private vehicle.
And so we've had a. Since post WorldWar ii, a much more called Americanized
(42:25):
suburban development pattern.
And that's, in some ways it's broughtpeople closer to places they would
otherwise have never been able toaccess, so we can't, we shouldn't
throw the baby outta the bath water.
The car's been in an amazinginvention and done a lot of good.
But it does mean over time that we become.
More disconnected from other modesof transport that would let us
(42:46):
deliver more interesting places.
And I think to your point, somuch is driven by accommodating
the cars these days.
There's a default, you don't have thechoice anymore to say to have people
that say, we're, we are willing tonot have a vehicle, so give us a small
lot or a smaller dwelling that doesn'thave to accommodate the vehicle.
I think that's really the point, right?
(43:08):
It's planners don't give peoplethe ability to make choice.
State planners are reallybad at giving people choice.
We have, on the flip side, an obsessionwith densification now, which sounds
again really good from a utopiantextbook ideal, but is actually a
very unaffordable way of growingthe city at the moment with a whole
bunch of sort of regulatory settings.
(43:29):
And again, it's somethingyou're experiencing in other
parts of the world too.
So that sort of pattern of havinga. An intense CBD with suburbs
around it is virtually universal.
Even some of the denser citiesin the world, people say, oh,
again, I talk about Manhattan.
I love Manhattan.
Been there a lot.
Families don't live in Manhattanunless they're uber rich.
They live in the suburbsor they live in New Jersey.
(43:50):
People talk about Paris.
Yeah, you've got the old city, whichis beautiful, and it's very sexy.
Living in a 30 square meter bed,sit if you're a young couple.
But.
They've got massivesuburbs around the city.
And that's just how it is.
So if we were better with setting upa public transport network that was
reliable and fast and affordable, youwould keep a lot of those vehicles off
(44:13):
the road, but you could still build thatmore affordable style of development.
The, one of the real tragedies I thinkwe're seeing around Australia, and I'm
not sure what it's like around the world,but there's an increasing over investment
in established areas with infrastructureat the expense of newer si newer
suburbs and growth areas in the regions.
(44:35):
And it's.
I think very political.
It's very much about, Hey,look at what we're building.
Everyone can see it.
And that seems to be the box that'sticked rather than is this delivering
the greatest value for the most peoplewithin this particular city or town.
And so over time, I think over probablythe last two decades, we've seen that
over investment, in, in mega projectsat the expense of a lot more smaller
(44:58):
things sprinkled around our cities andtowns that would make a much bigger
difference, livability, accessibilitythan what we're seeing at the moment.
And so as long as we keep doing that, it'sthen easy to say those new suburbs are up.
They're terrible, they're congested,they don't have the infrastructure,
but governments have made a veryliberal choice not to invest in them.
If they flipped some of thatscript and invested there, they'd
(45:20):
be much better placed as well.
So that's the public discourse and theexamination of political decisions by
not just the media, but the universitiesand also think tanks and industry.
Associations, max, wheredo you go for new ideas?
So what sort of sources, or if thereis any particular places, but new
(45:45):
ideas, where do you go for inspiration?
Where's the wealth for you?
Or is there many wealths.
Yeah, look, great question.
So firstly I'm obviously the formerpresident of the EDIA, the Urban Develop
Initiative of Australia, which is thepeak body for Australian developers.
That's one of my corego-tos as you'd expect.
We have a National Congress everyyear, which brings together developers
(46:06):
from around the country, theyshare experience, but also bring
in speakers from around the world.
So you get that global perspective too.
Often it's around precinctsor around great open spaces.
You can tie in with some of thosewith site tours to see what some of
the most innovative projects are inthe particular city that you're in.
And that's a great way of just broadeninghorizon and seeing what, some of
(46:27):
the best practices and is evolving.
I have a particular interest in the sortof modular and prefab housing space.
We're not doing a lot of it yet,and I think Australia's still got a
long way to go before it becomes de.
It is going to be one of the thingswe have to figure out at some point
to make housing more attainable.
We can't afford to keep building theway we do, particularly for density.
(46:50):
We have a real challenge though.
It's challenge in, in,in the negative sense.
At the moment, modular andprefab housing is still.
A lot more expensive than whata volume builder can deliver
something for in a greenfield area.
And as long as that's the case, it'sjust gonna remain relatively niche.
It's probably less expensivethan a super high-end builder
(47:13):
building something architectural.
But for the sort of entry level, I don'tthink it's there and it's a long way away.
But there's an increasing interest in it.
And so I'm looking at internationalexperience in some of the startups
that are looking at that space.
A member of YPO.
So there's a lot of exchangesof information there as well
with businesses from overseas.
So that sort of helps me keepabreast of things and tech.
(47:36):
There's a whole series of differentthings and plus nothing beats
traveling and seeing the thingsthat you like around the world.
Ca cam any thoughts on what Max just said?
Look, it'd just be wonderful to have.
The concept of a model project, I'mnot sure that we really have that
opportunity given all of the, to a modelproject in terms of just being able to
(48:00):
experiment with things that are different.
You need, oh, it's almost likejust ring fence an area and just
say, show us what you could do.
Let's just see something different.
Just something that we can provethat there is a bit another way if
we just approach things differentlyand in a ringfence itself, it's
not gonna destroy the whole world.
(48:22):
But, that's some sort ofconcept of a model project.
If we don't have one now, I wonderwhat it could be, max, and what
if you did have this imaginaryring-fenced opportunity somewhere,
what would you try, what would you do?
Look.
One of the things Australiahasn't done for a long time
is actually build a new city.
Which is quite extraordinarywhen you think about the
population growth that we've had.
(48:43):
We are the most urbanized countryon the planet at the moment.
And so the fact that we haven'tbuilt a new city in Australia for
over 30 years tells you that we'renot really taking growth seriously.
To bring it back to Sim City, one of thethings I'd love to do is actually have
exactly that, have a, have somewhere whichhas some of the core connections that
you need around, particularly transport.
(49:05):
So it could be a, region whichhas a train station nearby or
at its heart is otherwise notparticularly highly developed.
And you would experiment.
You try to create a moderncity which doesn't rely on.
Having a private vehicleto take you everywhere.
Now, yes, you might need some somewhere,but if you made it a people centric
and active transport centric place tobegin with, then it opens up so many
(49:29):
opportunities around the urban design,around the form of building, around
being able to reduce the price point.
And if you have that sort ofsignificant connection into a major
urban center as well, then it canbe a real affordable dormitory that
eventually becomes its own place.
So I think that would bean exciting opportunity.
It's just so hard to breakthrough the status quo.
(49:49):
And even on projects that are lessrevolutionary, Z cam, like often we, we
come in and we want to try and experimentmore and do more interesting stuff,
but the process just wears you down.
So it becomes about justtrying to get past the finish
line and get something going.
You'd need a real culturalshift to try and get people.
(50:12):
Behind you and give you that latitude todo some things that are very different.
And I don't think Australia'smature enough as a country
to do it, unfortunately.
When's the last point in time?
You think that window hasha has been in this country?
That's a tough question.
I'm, I love history, but I don'tknow how far back my knowledge goes.
(50:33):
I guess the closest thing you have today,something like Springfield in southeast
Queensland, you could never get thatdone today because there'd be too many
trees on the site and there'd be koalasthat are possibly impacted in habitat.
But that was the closest to saying,here's a very large tract of
land, let's plan for the future.
For 30 plus years they've built aCBD, and there's now a train station
(50:56):
that takes you into Brisbane.
So it's probably theclosest I've seen to that.
And I wonder
what the.
What were the conditions at thetime that allowed that to occur?
Why could that happen then and not now?
I guess it just, we didn't have the sameintensity of of naysay, this I think, if
I'm not mistaken, that sort of kicked offin the early nineties, so it was before
(51:19):
the sort of massive ster of climateand protecting everything came in and.
Explore those things and,protect important stuff.
But I think it's gone too far theother way along the lines we talked
about where now if something existedsacrosanct and it should never be changed.
And so you needed that setting,needed a government at the time,
(51:40):
I said, yeah, we're bet to make along term investment into extending
a highway and putting in the railcorridors and other bits and pieces.
I guess it just had a political andan ec economic and a environmental
environment that let you think aboutdelivering something like that.
It's interesting, sorry to Pete tojust stay on this one, but the, you
(52:00):
mentioned that was seeded in the earlynineties, which is, for all intents
and purposes, probably the lasttrue Australia wide deep recession
where maybe those conditions help.
People be a bit freer in, in how muchthey're prepared to risk, they're prepared
to take in the decision making process.
When you really are at a point whatwe've gotta do something we haven't
(52:22):
really, yes, there's been, JFC, butAustralia didn't cop it too badly then.
Back in the early nineties, allof Australia really felt that,
especially in Victoria maybe thatwin maybe that time will come again.
Maybe.
It's an interesting observation.
If you zoom out into the broadeconomic environment now, we seem to
be at a place where you can't havethose sorts of scenarios anymore.
(52:44):
All the monetary theories, changeinterest rates, are now used as tool
to try and keep everything afloat.
And we do have a much higherunderlying population growth as well.
It underpins the popula, sorry, theeconomic growth of Australia now.
So I. Do you wish it for a recession?
No.
Absolutely not.
But it's maybe thatthings have to get so bad.
(53:09):
It's to that everyone goes,all right, we actually do need
to change what we're doing.
And I don't know what itwould take to do that.
I think certainly some of the broadereconomic stuff we're experiencing at the
moment around, record ballooning, debtstate and federally low productivity
in Australia, all these things arepointing to us heading in the direction
where someone's at some point gonnasay, actually, we do need a pretty
(53:33):
wholesale review of how we do things.
I don't think we're quite there yet, butwhen it happens I think you're right.
It could spur on a whole new generationof innovation and quick decision making.
Never wasted crisis.
Max, we've come to culture corner.
Podcast Extra, something thatyou've seen, read, listened
(53:54):
to, or experienced recently.
It could be a film, it could be a book, itcould be an event that left an impression
and might interest our listeners
actually touched on it before, butI just watched the seven series
of drive to Survive on Netflix.
I'm a Formula One guy.
And people have a mixed viewof drive to survive 'cause
they sometimes do manufacturecontroversy when it's not there.
(54:16):
But last year was probably one ofthe most exciting seasons in Formula
One that we've seen in quite a while.
So it was quite enjoyable seeing thetwists and turns, particularly, how the
driver's championship was disconnectedfrom the manufacturer's championship
for the first time in a while.
So I did thoroughly enjoy that in my inthe background in my morning gym workout.
(54:37):
But yeah big drive, survive.
And Formula One lover.
Cam, have you got somethingfor our listeners?
I am on holidays and I literally joinedthis podcast having put my 10-year-old
daughter into a pocket that actuallygave her a little small barrel.
So I'm inspired by theocean and the environment.
(55:00):
And as much as it, itneeds to be embraced.
It also needs to be accepted.
There's plenty of it in this country.
We're not short of it.
We're not running out of it.
It's everywhere.
If you go and get it.
Okay.
Mine is a little bit different.
I've I recently came across this playcalled Victory Over the Sun , it was
(55:21):
first produced in 1913 in what was St.
Petersburg.
And it was the first abstract theater.
And the thing is completely crazy.
And what made me laugh at just besilent watching parts of this, is
that we think we are the radical ones.
We think we are the innovators, butsome of the crazy stuff that was
(55:44):
happening in Czarist Russia, andthen slightly after the revolution,
which was of course a terrible thing.
But some of the artwork from Russianconstructivism, some of the first
graphic art is absolutely marvelous.
But this victory over thesun, it's a complete nonsense.
Play.
The music doesn't make sense.
(56:05):
It, people left the theater, theythrew thing at the stage, but it
was the, just some of the crazinessthat people are capable of.
So I'll put links on it, links onto it,something you can watch Max when things
get you down, you can just put victoryover the sun and have a good laugh.
Love it, Pete.
(56:26):
Very good.
Alright, max, you'vebeen a wonderful guest.
Thank you so much.
Cam, you've filled in for Jess.
Jess will be back listeners.
She's just got a lot going on withhouse moves, but thanks again fellas.
It's been tremendous.
Thanks Peter.
Thanks Max.
Thanks having me.
Thanks for listening.
If you would like to hear more of ourpodcasts, hit the follow button on Spotify
(56:49):
or the like button on SoundCloud orthe subscribe button in Apple podcasts.
Please also visit our Instagrampage, LinkedIn or website for behind
the scenes footage of our podcastsand to get the latest on upcoming
or recently released episodes.
If you have any suggestions orfeedback, please get in touch via
our social media channels or byemailing planningxchangeatgmail.
(57:12):
com.
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