Podcast: Chandler talks about older blocks

Co-podder Sue Williams and I took ourselves off to the Owners Corporation Network’s 20^th anniversary event last week and it turned out to be a very revealing evening indeed.

OK, the plaudits and praise were flowing faster than the free wine – and that’s saying something. I hosted and Sue delivered a fascinating speech about how the OCN was formed in the darkest days of battle against corrupt developers, their sleazy managers, our supine strata committee and our incompetent strata managers.

We thought we were suffering a unique confluence of bad luck … until Sue met other strata chairs and discovered we were far from alone.

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LISTEN HERE

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The big event, however, was Building Commissioner David Chandler’s speech. In it he revealed the next phase of his revolution, which will gladden the hearts of owners in older buildings.

He also flagged an interest in carbon neutral buildings in the future and had a none too subtle sideswipe at yours truly for my ongoing campaign to get strata out of Fair Trading.

But it was generally agreed that the work OCN and especially its executive officer Karen Stiles has done laid the groundwork for David Chandler’s appointment as building commissioner.

You can hear David’s speech in this podcast, but OCN members will be able to stream the entire event — including Sue, strata lawyer Stephen Goddard, OCN chair Fred Tuckwell, stalwart Gerry Chia and Karen (Brokovich) Stiles – on their website ocn.org.au. There were also messages from Fair Trading Minister Victor Dominello and City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore.

If you’re not a member, there’s a simple remedy for that. Check it out … but only after you have listened to this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast (or reading the transcript), please share it with your friends using the social media buttons on this page.

TRANSCRIPT IN FULL

Jimmy  00:00

So as we mentioned last week, we went to the OCN’s (the Owners Corporation Network’s) 20th anniversary event on Wednesday. There were quite a lot of high-powered people there.

Sue  00:12

Yes, the room was packed. It was a fabulous occasion.

Jimmy  00:16

The Building Commissioner, David Chandler, was there and the Property Services Commissioner was there.

Sue  00:21

John Minns…

Jimmy  00:22

And we got a video message from Victor Dominello and Clover Moore. It was very exciting and interesting. So today, we’re going to take a listen to what David Chandler said in his speech. He said a couple of really interesting things about new innovations. We’ll have a chat about that. I’m Jimmy Thomson, I wrote the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.

Sue  00:46

And I’m Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.

Jimmy  00:48

And this is the Flat Chat Wrap. David Chandler seems to be a very popular man?

Sue  01:07

Absolutely. He’s a great speaker, isn’t he? I mean, he’s very colourful and interesting, and very accessible.

Jimmy  01:12

Yes. We’re going to take a listen to his speech and then we’ll have a chat about that… “Now, without OCN, we might never have been blessed with a Building Commissioner at all. And without this particular Building Commissioner, we might never have witnessed the profound and meaningful change in the building industry. Please welcome your Building Commissioner, David Chandler.”

David Chandler  01:37

Well, it’s a privilege to be here today, because we’ve been on a long journey together. But today’s story is really about OCN and I was talking earlier with a few folk here, that I see this is a bit like a graduation ceremony, where I’ve seen an organisation over 10 or so years (where I’ve been observing it), go from what was essentially about victims, to an organisation that’s about advocacy. And you get a much more coherent engagement with people who have a clear advocacy perspective, rather than just simply being bogged down with their experience as victims. Now, that’s not in any way to devalue the hell that I have seen people going through and it’s been really… The motivator for me, is that I’ve really had some really fantastic owners who have been through hell and they have broken down and they have cried on my shoulder and I think I’ve cried back. Because I do empathise with that.

And I guess in a way, that’s a motivator. So when we’ve started to do the things over the last couple of years that we’ve done, they’ve really been about, how do we take a perspective in all of this that says when you have to make decisions in the role that I’ve got;  how do you balance that? And I think the RAB Act is the first piece of meaningful legislation that really gave us the tools to start to turn this around. And I guess the neat thing about that, is that it really gives me very unfettered powers.

But I really only have to form a reasonable opinion about a defect, as opposed to be able to overly demonstrate the fact that it is. And I am comfortable with that, because what it does allow me to do, is to weigh up whether the impact on the developer is such that the commercial impact would be devastating, or whether they actually deserve to be devastated. But they can always under that legislation, go and take my decisions to the Land & Environment Court and the court can stand in my shoes and change my decision. But with an occupation certificate, an owners corporation can’t have that decision reversed; once it is there, it is there. So more frequently in my decision-making is that, I weigh those two things and say “well, if the developer doesn’t like my decision, he can take me to the Land & Environment Court, but if the owners corporation gets stuck with a lousy occupation certificate, they’re stuck with a lousy occupation certificate.”

So that’s been really, the genesis of all of the work, that we’ve really put the customer first. Now, my colleague, Natasha Mann, is here; put your hand up, Natasha, because Natasha and I both report to the secretary, and we report to the minister of the day. That journey started with Kevin Anderson. How good was Kevin Anderson as a minister? I mean, how available was he to all of you, and all of the other stakeholders, to listen to what they wanted to say, and how rationally did he and Gavin approach those conversations?

And it would not have been possible to actually have done this job, if it wasn’t inside the Department of Customer Service. I don’t think many people understand this thing called the Department of Customer Service. It’s been shaped by a couple of very energetic ministers over the years, of which of course, the most strong spear-thrower in all of that, is Minister Dominello.

But really, the Department of Customer Service sees the world through, ‘how do we provide better services to the public of New South Wales and the customers of New South Wales? How do we provide a customer experience to everybody that we have to deal with?’ So some of you may be surprised that we actually stop and think about, how do we provide a customer experience to some of the ‘crook’ developers? How do we moderate our behaviour in a way that we have to actually get them into the table, where we can actually have a coherent outcome? So, it would not have been possible, without being in the Department of Customer Service. It would not have been possible, if it wasn’t for this one-time rebuild of this state’s digital capabilities.

This digital New South Wales movement, that has been led by this minister, Dominello, will be a lasting legacy to this state. And if anybody thinks that train is not going to carry on, the power of digital has underpinned the work that we’ve done. So I just want to acknowledge the fact that I’m progressively handing over what I would call the operational piece of work to Natasha and her team. And of course, you know, that I’ve recently agreed to Matt Press moving across to be the executive director of the BRD. And we need to think about making sure people understand what that is, because Fair Trading and Safe Work is housed in that entity. But we’re moving what we see are the confident operational pieces, back to the mainstream business.

And that’s Natasha. And so, you’re all going to need to understand what her important role is. So Jimmy, today, I want you to realise there is a face on this person and I want you to make sure you understand that, because she’s got a very passionate and able Deputy Secretary in that space. And it’s a big job; it’s a huge job. And I don’t think anyone realises at anytime,  just how many moving parts that role has. But I’ve got a great relationship with Natasha, as I have with John Minns, because we’ve still got a lot of work to do in the next year; we have an amazing amount of work to do in the next year. I think the work that we’ve achieved to date… While I’ll call out the government and the ministers, I also want to acknowledge the fact that the crossbenchers and the opposition have bought into what we’re doing and I want to say that that’s a once-off experience, I’m told, that getting something like the RAB ACT through a parliament, where it was put on the table in February 2020….

It was through the parliament by June 2020 and it was enabled on the first of September 2020, with unanimous support of all members of parliament. Unanimous support is an unprecedented result and that happens with everybody buying into the fact that we had a common problem that needed to be fixed.

Karen, you’ve made that case and it’s no surprise to me, that you’ve been given the accolades today, for what you’ve achieved. Now, Karen is also going to be at the front edge. So she sent me an email yesterday to say “Hey, David, what do you think about we have zero-carbon by 2030 for the strata industry, or for the apartment industry?’ I thought ‘well, Karen, I’m not sure.’ Fortunately, I’m not in cabinet, so I don’t have to make that decision. But maybe, we just better think about what the progressive journey might look like. But whether it’s 2030, or whether it’s 2035, Karen, this industry is going to clean up its carbon act, big- time and it needs to. I think your drive; if you drive that as another part of your string of activities… Reducing carbon in our industry, requires an end-to-end resolution, from the very point you imagine a building, to the very point you make a building and then through its lifetime. So it’s a really worthy piece of work and I’m going to commit myself to working with you on that. {Applause} {Laughter}.

I’ve become very cautious about jokes, as well. I’ve even become cautious about where I play the air violin! But just as a quick heads-up of where we’ve been and where we’re going; The former Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, when I first met with her and I accepted this job, she said ‘David, I want you to focus on making buildings trustworthy in the first iteration of your role and then in the second iteration of your role, I want you to focus on what can we do with the buildings that are built.’

So we’ve had to boil the ocean slowly; we’ve we’ve had to deal with the fact that there’s been discontent, that perhaps we haven’t got to some of these defects earlier and we haven’t really been able to make the impact that you have expected, but we’ve never lost sight of the fact that that’s the mission. So I can tell you that within the next fortnight, we’ll be announcing a new initiative, called ‘Project intervene.’ That will be looking at how we can apply our learned capabilities now, to go back and make a difference on buildings that are what we call ‘legacy buildings,’ that have got serious defects in those buildings. Now, I don’t want to get you to imagine… You should not get ahead of the expectation that we can fix everything. It’ll be the art of the possible.

We’ll really agitate to fix those things we can fix; there will be some things we can’t fix. I don’t know what the answer to those buildings is, but right now, I want to start off with Project intervene, with you believing that, to the extent that’s possible, we will agitate; we will hold people accountable, we will make them face up to their defects, and go back and fix them. And we’ve already got 27 projects as a pilot, to prove whether we think our methodology is going to work. So for the next year, my greatest effort is going to be on looking at these legacy buildings, because I’m comfortable now, that the team has really settled on making the buildings that are coming over the fence, right now.

So I’m hoping Karen, waterproofing is something we’ll forget about down the track. I think we’ve turned that around, but we’ve got more work to do. So that’s where we’ve been to; impact on making buildings, now we’re going to turn our minds to, what happens to buildings after they’re built and to the extent we can make people accountable, and go back and fix some of this stuff, we will. So thank you for being our partner on that journey, Karen. Cheers!

Jimmy  12:10

A couple of interesting points there, Sue.

Sue  12:12

Absolutely. The zero-carbon was interesting, wasn’t it? That seems to be a new initiative from the OCN, to try and have zero-carbon by 2030.

Jimmy  12:22

Yes. And we’ll talk about that and his other initiative, Project Intervene, after this.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

And we’re back and it was funny, because the OCN chair, Fred Tuckwell, was a bit miffed…. He’d been hoping to announce the carbon initiative himself. I think David Chandler stole his thunder a little bit, but it’s all in a good cause. So the idea is, that new buildings, I believe; they want them to be zero-carbon by 2030. People don’t realise; the carbon that’s locked into high buildings, in terms of the amount of energy that’s used to build them. And, obviously, if they can find some way of reducing that, so that at the end of the day, it’s carbon-neutral. That’s quite a challenge, really, isn’t it?

Sue  13:32

Absolutely. I guess they were probably talking more about new buildings. They want all strata buildings to become carbon-neutral by 2030. But then, retrospectively, older buildings can retrofit, you know, solar panels… They can refit batteries; they can reduce the amount of water they use by…

Jimmy  13:54

Saving water, generally.

Sue  13:55

And metering water, I suppose. If you’ve got a metre, you’re probably much more likely to use less water.

Jimmy  14:01

You mean individual metres in the apartments?

Sue  14:05

And looking at changing pools from gas heating, to electricity and then powering that by solar.

Jimmy  14:12

Do you think the idea is that by making all these savings on the energy wastage in new buildings, as they’re being lived in, will counter the amount of energy used in building them?

Sue  14:28

Oh, hopefully. I guess that’s the idea, isn’t it, really?

Jimmy  14:31

I mean, unless they’re talking about using renewable (I mean, it can’t be really, I suppose); using renewables to actually build the building.

Sue  14:38

I don’t think that’s possible yet. Maybe one day. We’ll say “we want a building here and let’s let the sunshine build it.”

Jimmy  14:46

Or hydrogen. You could have hydrogen-powered cranes and things like that. I don’t know if they’ll ever get to the point of having electric… They seem to be developing everything electric, so that’s one possibility. The other thing that you mentioned was Project Intervene. Now this is (and he referred to the fact that there’s been a lot of frustration in the community, because older buildings haven’t been getting dealt with). I mean, he’s been working on buildings that are in the process of being built and he seemed to be saying that they’ve got everything in place to look after the buildings that are currently under construction, but they want to look at older buildings. Now, by older buildings; I mean, he calls them ‘legacy buildings.. I’m guessing that that’s buildings that are completed and inhabited, but less than six years old.

Sue  15:41

Oh right, so their warranty period would still be relevent.

Jimmy  15:44

Because he said ‘we’ve already got 27 projects that we’ve been doing as a pilot, to prove whether we think our legacy, sorry, our methodology is going to work. So for the next year, my greatest effort is going to be on looking at these legacy buildings.’ It would have to be; I mean, he’s talking about getting people to come back and fix the defects.  That’s right. With those developers and builders that are still around, hopefully. Because he also mentioned in his speech, the idea that when they go after developers, they have to consider whether forcing them to fix their defects is going to drive them into bankruptcy; drive them out of business. He also said that they have to decide whether they should be out of business, anyway.

Sue  16:33

Well, yes, because I guess, some of those developers, it would be not much of a loss for them to go under, really. Apart from the fact that we still want them to fix their defects.

Jimmy  16:42

Well, that’s a problem, you know; if they go under. I think that’s one of his frustrations, that he’s aware (as we are), of developers who will deliberately bankrupt themselves, so that the directors can walk away from the their obligations. And I think he’s frustrated that ASIC don’t look at that as a form of fraud, which it is really, especially for repeat offenders.

Sue  17:12

So if he’s looking at buildings within their six-year warranty, period, then he’ll be able to go back to those developers and builders and say “right, fix these.” But I guess for the older buildings (ones’ that are older than six years), there’s not an awful lot he can do for those. I mean, he has been looking at buildings that are retrospectively refitting themselves, and kind of adding new facilities and new parts; stages of the building onto them, and inspecting those, to make sure additional construction is up to scratch. I guess, really, he can’t do an awful lot for the older buildings.

Jimmy  17:47

No, I mean; it’s funny, because he’s saying that their next focus will be to get developers to go back and fix the stuff on recent builds, but I wonder if the next phase after that will be to compel owners corporations to fix the defects they know about in their buildings, even when they’re out of warranty, or way out of warranty.  Well, the developers are gone. We do know about buildings where people go in; they buy in and realise there are defects and rather than going to the great expense and trouble of fixing them, they think ‘I need to sell out before people find out about this.’

Sue  18:11

So the focus is on the owners corporations, rather than on the developers and builders? And there are a number of buildings around with fire orders against them, but if the council doesn’t insist on the building doing rectifications to make them safer, everybody’s living there with a bit of a risk. And that’s happening all over Sydney, I think, too. Or, they’re lazy and they don’t care.

Jimmy  18:50

We were just hearing about a building near here, where they went and looked at the fire door, and basically, it crumbled; it just fell apart, and then checked all the other fire doors and discovered that they were seriously in need of repair. The amazing thing was, that all these fire doors had allegedly been checked several times over the past few years, which is happening, you know, everywhere. The fire inspectors come in, and just tick boxes and don’t really… I mean, I guess like everybody else, they’re on a time-scale and they’ve got to move on to the next project, kind of thing.  That could be another possibility. The other thing that David Chandler has been saying (not in this speech), is about buildings that have had renovations and repair work done and those renovations and repair work could have been done by a registered trades person and builder, or they might have just been done by a hobby renovator and there’s just a huge disparity in whether the work that’s been done is actually up to code, for instance.

Sue  20:00

Well, that’s what I was saying earlier. You know, that’s the only power he has, really; to go back and make sure that new construction work is going to be okay.

Jimmy  20:11

It’s an interesting time, but he seemed very settled. He made a couple of wry comments about it having been an ‘interesting year.’ And the fact that he had to offer to resign…. Well, he resigned (he didn’t offer to resign), to get things sorted out in Fair Trading and Customer Service… His department. So it has been an interesting time for him.

Sue  20:40

And I think it’s probably worth mentioning that the Executive Director of the Owners Corporation Network received a Lifetime Achievement Award. And she was called the ‘Erin Brockovich of the strata industry,’ for all work she has been doing, which has been fantastic, as well.

Jimmy  21:00

That’s right. That’s Karen Stiles

Sue  21:02

Congratulations, Karen!

Jimmy  21:03

And she did not expect that award; genuinely. I hosted the event and I had to spend a lot of time helping to organise it in a way that she would not know that she was going to get the big award of the evening.

Sue  21:17

That was fantastic!

Jimmy  21:18

And that is another aspect of this…. You know, apart from the David Chandler thing; there was a lot of praise heaped on the OCN, for the work that they’ve done for the past 20 years. I mean, you were there right at the beginning… You got an award?

Sue  21:33

Yes, I got a Lifetime Achievement Award, too! I was surprised and there were a few people there, from the very first meeting of the OCN as well (which was great to see), from some of the buildings around Sydney.

Jimmy  21:49

You made a nice speech, talking about how we’d had trouble in our building with defects and corrupt developers and managers and the rest of it, and how you reached out to other buildings and discovered that they all had exactly the same problems, or very similar problems. That was the start of it all. There was some speculation about whether things would be better in Victoria and Queensland, if they’d managed to get something like the Owners Corporation Network going. I mean, there were efforts a few years ago, to try and set up satellite branches of the OCN. I don’t know why they never really got going?

Sue  22:35

Well, I guess they didn’t manage to get big groups in either of the States, but in Queensland, they have the Unit Owners Association of Queensland, which has been going a long, long time.

Jimmy  22:47

That’s true and they’re quite lively, but they tend to be very focused on management rights.

Sue  22:54

Yes, well, that’s been their biggest problem.

Jimmy  22:55

And then in Victoria, they set up a group called (which is still going); ‘We Live Here.’ They were very focused on fighting short-term rentals and not successfully (it has to be said), even though they had a lot of support from Melbourne City Council. The issue for them was, it was a single-issue campaign, and they lost the battle very early, in Victoria. The Victorian Government just said “yep, bring them in… We don’t care.” I think something like that will evolve in Victoria and Queensland. There was some talk about how, if everything goes well, then the OCN will become irrelevant and redundant over the next few years, because the problems will have been dealt with at the government level.

Sue  23:51

You never know! it would be a nice aim, really!

Jimmy  23:54

We live in hope. And the Erin Brockovich award was quite… I think somebody was going to call it the Karen Brockovich Award, which was quite apt, because there is somebody going around calling themselves the ‘Erin Brockovich of Strata’ and they’re not. It was an interesting evening.

Sue  24:16

It was.

Jimmy  24:19

Next week, the podcast will be pretty much given over to the ‘Lawyer in the Hot Seat Session’ I had with David Bannerman the other day. I mean, we were supposed to talk for an hour and it went for about an hour and 20 minutes.

Sue  24:33

So is the podcast going to be an hour and 20 minutes, as well?

Jimmy  24:35

The podcase will be serialised! Probably split it over… We’ll cut out a lot of the blather (which was mostly me) and split it in two.

Sue  24:46

Because I think you dealt with some interesting issues, didn’t you really?

Jimmy  24:50

Mould in apartment blocks was a big topic, but there were lots of other things and how to get rid of a dysfunctional committee was one of them… That came up. And we got through about 30 questions, which is not bad in the time allocated. And there were a lot of tangential issues that came up, as well. Questions led to that. I mean, you can tell when you’ve been speaking for over an hour, and you’re not even aware of the time. It was pretty interesting. So that will be next week and the week after. It will be ‘Lawyer in the Hot Seat.’

Sue  25:31

I look forward to it.

Jimmy  25:32

Right, and thanks for this, Sue. Thanks for coming and talking about your big night, last week.

Sue  25:39

Pleasure!

Jimmy  25:40

And thank you all for listening. We’ll talk to you again soon.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

Thanks for listening to the Flat Chat Wrap podcast. You’ll find links to the stories and other references on our website, flatchat.com.au. And if you haven’t already done so, you can subscribe to this podcast completely free on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favourite pod-catcher. Just search for Flat Chat Wrap with a W, click on subscribe, and you’ll get this podcast every week, without even trying. Thanks again. Talk to you again next week.