We had a new PHO out last week – that’s a Public Health Order, not a Vietnamese noodle soup – and as we discuss in the pod, it’s more of a dog’s breakfast from NSW Health.

Are we supposed to allow renovations in apartments when people are being told to stay inside and even work from home?

Are cleaners essential workers? How about building managers? Does anybody in NSW Health realise that apartments and townhouses are significantly different from each other and, certainly, from free-standing bungalows?

When they tell us to pass by-laws to fill the gaps in their legislation, do they even know that that means and how hard it can be.

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Do they know that some blocks – maybe even the majority – don’t have building managers, strata managers or even active committees? Or that half the strata population are tenants with zero effective say in the way their blocks are run?

Is anyone in Fair Trading trying to explain the facts of strata life to the Health Department policymakers … and are they listening?

We ask former OCN board member and active advocate for strata residents Jane Hearn what NSW Health is thinking, if anything.  

Also in the pod, we discuss this story about a new star ratings system for new apartment blocks in NSW and try desperately not to be too cynical.

And we discover a tiny skerrick of good news for owners in Mascot Towers.

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  0:00 

I’ve got a bit of a confession to make.

Sue  0:01 

What?

Jimmy  0:03 

 I think I might have Olympic fever.

Sue  0:06 

What’s Olympic fever, Jimmy?

Jimmy  0:08 

Well, I started to suspect this, when the figures came out last week for the new number of infections in Sydney. There were 96 and my immediate response was to go “come on, Australia! Come on, Sydney; you can do it!” Which is probably an inappropriate response.

Sue  0:28 

Absolutely, yes, but the Olympics have been amazing.

Jimmy  0:32 

Terrific relief from all this doom and gloom, of which there is much.

Sue  0:37 

It’s been fantastic for keeping us occupied during lockdown.

Jimmy  0:40 

Yes and keeping us thinking about going to the gym, or having a swim or whatever. Today, we will not be talking about the Olympics; we’ll be talking about a new scheme that the government’s bringing in to have a star rating for new developments. And, we’ll be talking about the latest public health orders and how confusing (and confused), they are, when it comes to apartments. And, finally, a tiny little bit of good news for the people in Mascot Towers. I’m Jimmy Thomson. I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.

Sue  1:20 

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

Jimmy  1:23 

And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

This weekend, we had yet another public health order from New South Wales Health. Once again, apartments seemed to be totally beyond their capacity for thought or concern, because in their bureaucratic gobbledygook (because of pressure from the construction industry), they have now removed all restraints on building work, apart from in the eight local government areas that are in southwest Sydney, that are currently the worst affected by the pandemic. What this means is, on one hand, you’ve got the Premier, Gladys and the Health Minister, Brad, saying you’ve got to stay home; just stay home. Just don’t go out. Don’t leave; if you can work from home, work from home and people, generally, seem to be doing that.

Sue  2:31 

On the other hand, you’ve got construction workers allowed back into apartment buildings to redo bathrooms and redo kitchens and carry on with the renovation frenzy, that we’re all in.

Jimmy  2:43 

And one suspects, it’s all done on that basis of ‘well, if you wanted to have a nice life, you should never have bought an apartment.’

Sue  2:53 

So with that in mind, we had a chat to Jane Hearn.

Jimmy  2:57 

Jane is a longtime member of the Owners Corporation Network and a former board member and she has been trying to establish some clarity for apartment owners, in public health orders. She’s been lobbying the politicians who are issuing these PHO’s. That’s pho, that’s…

Sue  3:22 

Vietnamese soup.

Jimmy  3:24 

And you know what? It’s less like Vietnamese soup and more like a dog’s breakfast. Let’s talk to Jane. Hi, Jane.

Jane  3:33 

Hi Jimmy, how are you?

Jimmy  3:34 

I’m very well.

Sue  3:36 

Hi, Jane.

Jane  3:37 

Hi Sue.

Sue  3:39 

I think you’ve been involved with a public health order. Is the New South Wales Government dealing with this in a good way, with apartment residents?

Jane  3:49 

Well, I think it’s been very patchy and it’s been quite difficult to convince them that they need to be explicit about strata schemes, when they’re drafting public health orders. I can go through a number of those issues, if you wish, but I’m sure we’ll get to them.

Jimmy  4:07 

The first issue that occurs to me, is that it took them two weeks after they’d issued the mask orders, for officers to say that people in apartment blocks should be wearing masks on common property and lift areas. Do you have any idea why it took them so long to get to that point?

Jane  4:27 

I think that they haven’t yet caught up with the realities in apartment buildings and the governance structures and the difficulties of applying these sorts of standards and measures. I think by the time they are mandated, it was a day that we had a meeting with them in the morning and in the afternoon. The mandate was out, but at that time, they were also dealing (already), with a significant transmission in an apartment building in Bondi, so I think the reality was starting to hit them.

Jimmy  5:02 

I mean, that apartment block in Bondi; there were five different households, if I recall, that were affected. Were they all on the same floor, do you know, or, were they through the building?

Jane  5:15 

We don’t know. One of the other issues is that it’s an historic issue; there is an absolute privacy around people’s personal health and we all of course, want that and support that. When they approach apartment buildings, they do say to them, that they won’t release any details to the media. I think that’s to ensure that people come forward, and they have a belief, I think, that if they list buildings, then that might be damaging to the reputation, or it might cause alarm. I think a lot of these kind of old ways of thinking; they have value, but they’re not always appropriate in a pandemic, so it’s taking them time to catch up. They are starting to list some apartment complexes now, because there’s a high volume of traffic coming in and out, that isn’t always just the residents.

Sue  6:04 

Because often residents in apartment buildings might not even know that they’ve been locked down. They might be reading the orders and if the building isn’t named, they kind of think “well, it’s not affecting us.”

Jane  6:17 

Well, they’re reading the orders and trying to figure out what does apply to a strata scheme, in terms of the building. That’s the biggest challenge, affecting literally thousands of strata managers and tens of thousands of schemes. In terms of their own building, ideally, the area health team is in contact with whoever they think is the appropriate person to contact and endeavoring to then contact all the residents. We do know that not all residents are contacted and some of that depends on the assessment that the area health team makes; what the risk is, but it’s very patchy. We’re not convinced that they’re always contacting the right people or that the communication is going out to all the people that it should do.

Jimmy  7:05 

They don’t seem to understand that different buildings work in very different ways. You could have a building, like the one that we live in, where the committee is very active. There is a structure for getting information out to people through the concierge,  but not every building has concierges and not every building has an active committee, but they don’t seem to be able to grasp that (‘they’ being the health department), there are huge differences in the ways that different buildings work. Is that fair?

Jane  7:36 

I think that is fair and I think that they themselves are stuck with this rather tricky situation. You might have a scheme where it’s small enough for people to know each other and be in fairly regular contact… You’ll have another building where you’ve got a lot of tenants and the strata roll is not up to date; the strata manager is not very active… There’s no building manager. That’s a far more difficult situation. I mean, they would literally have to go around and knock on people’s doors. We do know, of course that tenants are often (in fact, routinely); the notices for new tenancies are not given and so the secretary has a very difficult job, in keeping strata rolls up to date, which means their contact details aren’t there. They’re hearing about it through their real estate agent.

Jimmy  8:27 

Right, if at all.

Jane  8:30 

That’s right.

Sue  8:31 

And in Victoria, they seem to be sending experts to apartment buildings, to spearhead all the information strategies there. It seems to be very different approach to the one in New South Wales.

Jane  8:45 

I think with Victoria, they’ve been on the front foot with the apartment complexes, once they got to (I think it was stage three, or it may have been stage four, but I think it was stage three)… They then had directions in their public health orders about, for example,  gyms, pools, spas; those types of internal facilities, and they closed them at the same time they closed other indoor recreation facilities. They’ve been much more open in the media, about talking about apartment complexes that are affected. One can hope that that also means that there’s a sort of a practice and a protocol and consistency in how they contact residents, as well.  I’ve seen the Commander at the Aerial apartments, standing outside, talking about the support they were giving to residents, so much more open; much more on the front foot

Jimmy  9:43 

Do you think there’s a standard operating response here, in (I think I know the answer to this one, I’m asking the question),  New South Wales for when an apartment building has a number of infections (or infectious people in that); do they now have a protocol that they can follow, or are they just making it up as they go along?

Jane  10:08 

I’ve certainly not seen it and I don’t think either OCN or SCA has been given any transparency about any protocol. In fact, I don’t think there a consistent way of communicating, which, of course, would make it easier for strata managers, if there was  a standard; a fact sheet or something they could just send it to all the residents. The other side of this is that they do make individual assessments of the building and how active that person is in the building. Some people might test positive and it’s an historic case. They’re not going to then be concerned necessarily about everybody else on the floor, or in the building. There’ll be other buildings where it’s more than one person; they’re active in different parts of the building. There’s interconnections with other buildings, like hotels, shared car, parks, that sort of thing. Hopefully, in that scenario, they then take a more robust approach and then are also giving advice about cleaning; deep cleaning. We have tried to explain that, that’s fine; they know what they want to do, but for everybody sitting in apartments, they’re not accustomed to having contact with their area health team. They just they don’t know what to expect. Just filling in that gap, I think, would put a lot of people at ease. They would understand that there is a process, but we do know that some people are waking up, because the hazmat team is in the hallway. Or, the first thing they know is they look out of the bedroom window and see the police. I think it’s just a communication gap; an information gap we need to fill, really.

Jimmy  11:53 

So, what do you think are the most fundamental shortcomings in what New South Wales is telling us to do (or not telling us to do), right now?

Jane  12:02 

I think that they are hugely reluctant to give directions to an Owners Corporation. They don’t understand that an Owners Corporation has limited powers; that it can’t just make decisions and make bylaws to respond to the risk of transmission from Delta, or the pandemic, or in fact, any other infectious disease. They need to address explicitly, the fact that we have this sort of split system. We have individuals who own private apartments and have specific property rights and part of that is an equitable interest in the common property. The Owners Corporation manages the common property and the two are not always in complete harmony. Strata committees are being faced with people who have a much more individual way of looking at their rights, even in a high -risk situation like a pandemic. What Health is not understanding is that unless they give explicit directions, they are leaving Owners Corporations (and private individuals as well), with an enormous amount of uncertainty. It’s a recipe for conflict and bylaws are not the way to solve it.

Sue  13:25 

Absolutely. So the kind of directions they should be giving; I guess that’s about masks in common property, masks in lifts, masks in the landscaped garden areas, or on the podiums of buildings and also, protocols for if somebody is infectious, what they should do in the building, like not actually leave their apartment, apart from testing, perhaps.

Jane  13:49 

You have a whole lot of different elements of the orders that apply to individuals and that applies, whether you live in a freestanding house or an apartment. I know that if I have to isolate, I shouldn’t be leaving my apartment. But of course, I have to leave it in an apartment building, because I have to go to the garbage room, etc. One of the things that they could be doing is they could just trigger the masked mandate, whenever they trigger it for any indoor setting, like a shopping center or an entertainment facility, to take account of the common areas. They should (I believe), be giving directions about the recreation facilities, when they do that for public and commercial facilities. They’re very hesitant about this; it appears that they are being lobbied by individuals, telling them that they really want their facilities left open and I completely understand that, but there comes a point where you cannot manage them with sufficient care, to eliminate (or really significantly reduce), the risk of transmission.

Sue  15:05 

I guess that’s one of the issues, isn’t it? That’s the difficulty. In some buildings, they’re able to implement, say, gym booking systems and only have one person in there at a time, so it would significantly cut the risk, whereas in other buildings, maybe it will be much more difficult,

Jimmy  15:20 

Surely there is a possibility there, for the health department to say, look, if you have a viable program for your residents, that allows for social distancing and cleaning and separation of people and the maximum number of people in the gym, based on square meter ratio…If you have that, you can keep your gyms open and your swimming pools open. If you don’t have that, then they have to close. It’s actually quite a simple thing to do. You come up with a plan, or if you don’t come up with a plan, then shut the facilities. They would have to put up notices saying ‘we have closed the facilities, because we don’t have a plan to manage it.’

Jane  16:07 

I think that the difficulty is that there’s enormous variety, as Sue said, so you might have a so-called gym (which is not much more than a smallish room) and the ventilation is not that good. There’s a fair bit of retrofitting in some of these buildings. They’re not always designed, purpose-built. Even in buildings that have been adapted, it doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily got all the right ventilation. I’ve experienced that on my own scheme. One of the difficulties is that, I think, without clear directions, it leaves strata committees, Owners Corporations and community associations under pressure from people who insist on having access, where they can’t necessarily manage it in a COVID -safe way. It has been said to me by somebody within Health, that these are non -essential services and that cleaning does not remove the risk of transmission.

Sue  17:08 

That’s another area of confusion, isn’t it? Essential work; does that include cleaning common properties, like lift doors and things in a building? Does it include residents having their own cleaners into their buildings; those kind of services as well? Should people be allowed to have renovations done in their buildings?

Jane  17:27 

This is where we come back to the way the orders are drafted and the concept of residential premises encompasses both freestanding homes. So, an individual living in a freestanding home, in a suburb where they’ve got a huge distance from other people, all the way up to the 800-lots scheme; 18 buildings, 19 lifts, three pools and a population which is the size of a small village. When you look at the orders and you see the description of residential premises, you can see that yes, legally it does encompass apartment buildings and residential schemes, but from a practical point of view, it’s just it’s not very helpful. Everybody is on high alert; very vigilant and there is a pretty high level of anxiety around, whenever the orders change. There’s a very big reaction and a lot of people looking for clarification and then the confusion starts and in fact, just exacerbates the anxiety, that is completely unnecessary. If you just step back and think about it, what is the order trying to achieve? It was trying to reduce mobility, reduce interactions and it was not ‘business as usual.’ People needed to adapt, to stop the spread of the pandemic. You put that framework; put that hat on. The explanatory notes at the front of a public health order are often quite helpful in that regard. You think about it from that perspective, but it’s hard, because it means you’ve got literally thousands of people, all trying to do this, when one person in Fair Trading or Health (who actually gets the formula of words to communicate it clearly), would stop all that.

Jimmy  19:23 

Now, just on a couple of issues; the question of renovations in apartments… If you’ve got your renovation permit from your Owners Corporation, are you now allowed to go ahead with that renovation in your apartment block?

Jane  19:40 

From the 31st of July, but for all of the LGA’s; all of the schemes outside of the LGA’s,  we now have a public health audit that says that workers are permitted onto residential premises. But, there’s a two worker/same room rule. You can have your minor renovation. You might be hanging curtains, laying carpet. Many of these things are not things you need to get permission from an Owners Corporation, provided that the work can be carried out with only two workers in the same room, alone at the time that the work is being carried out, then it is permitted under the new rules from the 31st of July.

Jimmy  20:29 

So that means that if you’re having a bathroom done and somebody’s come in and they’re in the bathroom on their own, drilling up your tiles, then all the people who have been forced to work from home, who also live in that building, have to put up with that noise and disruption?

Jane  20:46 

Yes, but let me just backtrack again. If you look at the front of the public health order, in the explanatory note, it says that the new order is intended to permit certain work to be carried out in a residential premises, if the person carrying out the work is not in contact with residents when the work is being carried out.

Sue  21:08 

 So, nothing to do with noise?

Jane  21:10 

Oh no, because this is about public health. If you look at this from a strata perspective, you can say it’s simply not possible for people to carry out work with no contact with residents. Because, when you come into an apartment building, the building is full; there are residents everywhere, including on common property. You cannot guarantee that there is no contact. The rule is written very much with (I think), ordinary, private dwellings in mind.

Sue  21:45 

The Department of Fair Trading should really be getting involved with Department of Health, shouldn’t they and saying “look, this doesn’t really apply to apartments, or this really does apply to apartments.”

Jane  21:54 

That’s right. There’s clarification that’s needed and I think when you look at the black -and-white letter of the order itself at the new provision, do you really have to ask; well, you scratch your head. ‘Residential premises’ includes all these strata schemes; there’s no definition of room. There’s not even an interpretive note, or an example or anything, that would assist a strata scheme to understand whether the Owners Corporation or the strata committee could get regular workers back on site, to do repairs and maintenance and general cleaning of the common property.

Jimmy  22:35 

What we had done in Victoria; what happened there was, they issued an edict (this was last year during the lockdown), that you couldn’t continue building work while people were in the residence. They said no more renovations, building work while people are in the residence and a lot of pigheaded, selfish people said “well, we’re not going to be in our flat when they’re renovating it, so we are allowed.” It took about two or three weeks for the government there to say “no, the building; the strata building, is the residents that we’re referring to here and you cannot continue work in the building, when there are people in residence,” which saved a lot of grief for people who were forced to work from home while renovations were going on around them. We’re not getting that here. We’re getting kind of a message of “well, yeah; it’s open to interpretation, blah, blah, blah. Are they going to be in contact with other residents?” This is exactly the kind of thing that we need. Fair Trading (I think, especially), have dropped the ball here. They’re the people who are supposed to know what apartment living is all about. Are they actually contributing anything to these public health orders?

Jane  23:54 

I think they’re trying. I think that it’s one thing to have a high-level conversation. It’s another thing when you get right down into the officer level, where people are actually drafting and then giving instructions to drafters. What you don’t get is this cross -fertilization. I think of the knowledge and the legal policy expertise flowing, so that the language and the policy is appropriately adapted to strata schemes. Understanding both the physical environment for the individual resident and the statutory obligations and the limits on those statutory obligations of the Owners Corporation itself.

Jimmy  24:59 

And, the politics of strata scheme seem to be completely alien to the people making these decisions. They don’t realize that communities actually have people who have to try and get on with each other. Jane, thank you so much for giving up part of your Sunday and dragging yourself away from the Olympics.

Jane  25:21 

You’re welcome. I think we hope that we will get a clear statement from government, but I fear that that will not be the case. I’m hoping that during the week, that there will be some effort to clarify that for schemes, that we’re not all just left, trying to deal with it individually.

Jimmy  25:40 

Absolutely. Thanks so much, Jane.

Jane  25:42 

Your’e welcome. Bye.

Jimmy  25:47 

Interesting, her insight into the way the politics of these things work and how government officials (state government officials), have no idea how apartments work.

Sue  26:01 

And there really is no excuse for that.They should get educated as soon as possible. There are so many of us living in apartments and we’re often really vulnerable to these kind of pandemics, in a way that people live in freestanding houses aren’t.

Jimmy  26:15 

It was interesting, when we came off air (as often happens in these things), she commented that she’d been talking to a Health Department official, about their lack of concern for apartments and he said “hey, I live in an apartment, so I know what’s going on.” Then almost in the next breath, said “if you have any problems just pass bylaws.”

Sue  26:37 

It’s that easy is it? It can happen in a day?

Jimmy  26:39 

Yeah. Like, you do realize that you need to give, what is it, 14 days notice? And, you’ve got to get 75% of the owners and do you really want the 85,000 apartment blocks in New South Wales all to be holding AGM’s, or general meetings, so that they can pass bylaws to fit your public health orders, every two weeks? It’s not just that the people in Health don’t know how apartment blocks work. They think they do. They think they know; they think it’s obvious. It’s easy. It’s simple. Obviously, if they think apartment politics is simple, they clearly don’t know how apartments work.

Sue  27:22 

And god help us all!

Jimmy  27:23 

Indeed, we’re the ones who have to cope with the noodle soup of policy, coming out of Health. After this, we are going to be talking about what should be (and could be), good news about dodgy developments.

[MUSIC]

Sue  27:47 

The government is talking about bringing in a new star rating system, aren’t they? Tell me about this, Jimmy; what is it?

Jimmy  27:53 

I can tell you what it isn’t.

Sue  27:54 

Okay.

Jimmy  27:55 

It is not TripAdvisor for apartment blocks.

Sue  27:58 

That’s a shame, in so many ways!

Jimmy  28:01 

It is not even a Choice rating for apartment blocks.

Sue  28:07 

So what is it then?

Jimmy  28:08 

It is a new system where they brought together all these different parameters about how you could decide if a building; a new development, was more likely to be good or bad. It’s things like the track record of the builders, the track record of the engineers, the track record of the developers, the architects…Whether there’s been any evidence of phoenixing, that any of these entities have been involved in in the past. They put that into a big mix-master; they’ve got some sort of algorithm. They put these data points in, as they say and at the end of it, they go “ah, that is a four star development.”

Sue  28:51 

Well, that’s good, isn’t it? It gives us an indication of whether the developer has been okay in the past and so is likely to be okay into the future.

Jimmy  29:00 

Yes, except that at the moment, it’s voluntary.

Sue  29:04 

Oh, what’s the point of that?

Jimmy  29:06 

So, you’re a developer; you come forward and say “hey, apply your algorithm to this apartment block and where do I pick up my five stars?”

Sue  29:21 

So the good developers will go into this system and the bad developers will ignore it?

Jimmy  29:26 

 Yes.

Sue  29:27 

But, then in the long term, that’s probably not the best solution, but it’s better than nothing, because it means that if somebody doesn’t have a star rating and you’re a buyer, you think “Well, why doesn’t it have any kind of star rating whatsoever? I’m going to be a bit more suspicious here. I might go over to a building that does have a star rating.”

Jimmy  29:46 

Yeah, I mean, part of the program is that they are encouraging developers to advertise their star rating. You can imagine, if they get a two star or a one star, they’re probably not going to advertise that. But, as you say, the savvy potential purchasers will go “hang on, here’s an apartment block here and there’s an apartment by this developer, and they’ve got a five star rating. Okay, it’s a bit more expensive, but there’s this other building here, which is cheaper, and it’s got no stars, or none that they are prepared to confess to…”

Sue  30:23 

So that’s going to be a false economy.

Jimmy  30:26 

I think what will be really interesting is if the lenders; if the banks come on board… If you go in and say “I want to get a mortgage for this off-the-plan development” and the bank says “well, how many stars have they got, because we are not lending money to anything three stars or under.” That could have a really profound effect on the market.

Sue  30:52 

Yeah and it’s interesting, because you might have a building, which is quite affordable and it might be done by a really good developer and a good architect and good builders and it ends up with five stars….Suddenly, it might not be affordable anymore. You never really quite know.

Jimmy  31:07 

Yeah, but these guys know their market and they know the price point. Famously, there was one development in the city where they completely underestimated the demand for their apartments and so in the first day of selling, they…

Sue  31:23 

Suddenly realized that and they closed down the whole process.

Jimmy  31:26 

Shut down the thing for three hours and added 15% on the price of all their apartments and still sold out. So yeah, but generally speaking, the developers; they’re more money people than they are construction people, let’s put it that way. They would know where the price point is for their apartments and the quality of build, the finish and the location, etc.

Sue  31:52 

So, this is a good thing.

Jimmy  31:53 

It is a good thing.

Sue  31:54 

Good to see how it turns out.

Jimmy  31:56 

It will take a while to ‘click in.’ Of course, if the big developers don’t get involved; you know, if you’re Mirvac and Meritons, LendLease and Crown…People like that. If they don’t get involved, then it could sink the whole thing.

Sue  32:13 

Surely, they will.

Jimmy  32:14 

You would hope so.

Sue  32:16 

Well, that’s good news.

Jimmy  32:17 

And the good other piece of good news is for the residents (or the owners), in Mascot Towers.

Sue  32:24 

Yeah? Oh, good!

Jimmy  32:27 

No, it’s not that good.

Sue  32:28 

Okay. The court case isn’t over yet, is it?

Jimmy  32:32 

Out of the kindness of their heart, the Bayside Council decided to waive interest on the rates that have been outstanding and they’re not charging them anymore for garbage  pickup.

Sue  32:51 

Thank goodness for that! Those poor people; your heart goes out to them.

Jimmy  32:55 

Can you imagine; you’re sitting there thinking “oh, this is as bad as it’s going to get,” then suddenly, one of those envelopes with red letters on it, drops through your letterbox and says ‘you owe us all this money for rates; pay up or else.’  What would you do?

Sue  33:12 

On an apartment you can’t even live in?

Jimmy  33:14 

Yeah, well you just say “well, look, here’s the keys of the apartment. Take it out of the sale price.” We shouldn’t laugh; it’s a horrible situation, but it lets out a little bit of good news, I suppose. Good old Bayside Council. People are saying that they should just waive the rates and the whole thing, but they’re saying that the government would have to pass legislation to allow them to do that and the government is not showing any signs of doing anything of the kind.

Sue  33:43 

Well, the government hasn’t done anything for Mascot Towers residents. Maybe they should, you know, in the corner of their hearts, find a little space for them and pass that legislation.

Jimmy  33:54 

I think they’re too busy, making sure we all have to put up with people’s building renovations around us. Because, you’ve got to keep the builders happy. That’s our government’s motto. And on that slightly cynical note, thank you once again Sue, for your time.

Sue  34:10 

Fine Jimmy, thank you.

Jimmy  34:11 

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

[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 favorite 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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai