Podcast: Luxury pad threat to low-cost homes

It’s a bit of a catch-up in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap and a look to the immediate future, too.

We’ll be getting abreast of the news that NSW is planning to tighten regulations on strata managers in the state – a move that was announced a couple of weeks ago when Sue was off air.

What will this so-called crackdown mean? Will really bad strata managers lose their licences? Not very likely, we say, and for a number of valid reasons.

We’ll also be looking at a story that appeared this week in which “unelected bureaucrats and boffins” were accused of hampering the development of much-needed new apartments.

And in between we’ll be talking about a trend we are calling “luxureduction’ where low-cost homes for poor people are being threatened by luxury dwellings that will house a fraction of the number of people they displace. 
Sue’s alarming report on this growing trend is currently slated to appear in the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend.

Big issues, all three, and heaps of grist to our podcast mill.

Transcript in full

Jimmy  00:00

Sue Williams, you are back in the saddle.

Sue Williams  00:02

Yes, I am. And it’s so nice to be here, Jimmy

Jimmy  00:05

And just in time to catch up on some of the things we’ve missed while you’ve been away and we’ve been doing other things, like talking to David Sachs, as we did last week, one of the things we missed was reaction to the news that the government is planning a kind of crackdown on strata managers?

Sue Williams  00:25

Yes, because I think they’ve got a new set of draft laws, haven’t they,

Jimmy  00:28

And we’re going to be talking about the battle between affordable housing and luxury apartments that seems to be popping up, especially in this area, I’m told.

Sue Williams  00:40

And then we’re going to talk about the joint planning panels, aren’t we, because they’ve recently been causing lots of controversy because they keep turning down developments,

Jimmy  00:49

Bureaucrats and boffins, according to The Daily Telegraph, that’s quite a lot. So we’d better crack on. I’m Jimmy Thomson. I write the flat chat column for the Australian Financial Review,

Sue Williams  00:59

And I’m Sue Williams, and I write about property for domain, the seemingly herald the age and the AFR,

Jimmy  01:04

And this is the Flat Chat Wrap,

Jimmy  01:20

So the government isn’t waiting for the report it’s commissioned through a company called McGrathNichol into strata managers, or the strata management business, or perhaps specifically Netstrata, the company that kind of started this whole thing when they were exposed in an ABC 730 report.

Sue Williams  01:41

All right, that’s right, they were trying to put business the way of many of their owned companies. Weren’t they?

Jimmy  01:46

Yeah, they got, they got, they got what they call vertical integration. So they have a strata insurance brokerage, and they have a legal firm as well,

Sue Williams  01:58

Which is fine, but they, I don’t think they were telling people that they were companies owned by them,

Jimmy  02:03

Right? And the law says that if you’re a strata manager and you take commissions for getting insurance, which is compulsory, and the commissions are usually about 20% then you have to declare it. But of course, they first of all said, “Well, it’s not us, it’s this other company which we just happened to own that’s getting the commission. And it’s not commission anyway. It’s a fee for service.” It just turns out that that fee for service meant that some people were paying more than double for their insurance than they should have.

Sue Williams  02:33

Oh my goodness.

Jimmy  02:34

And it’s funny, because our investment property is managed by Netstrata, and they were reassuring all the owners just the other day that even though, yes, there was this kind of fee for servicing happening, and hey, you’re not paying 20% on your insurance premium, you’re only paying 16% so lucky you!

Sue Williams  02:55

‘Ray!

Jimmy  02:55

By the way, it could have been 28% because That’s the average that our company charges you think, just stop digging. You know, just

Sue Williams  03:05

And didn’t they start saying it wasn’t really their fault. It was just journalists making trouble.

Jimmy  03:09

The media. The reason people think

Sue Williams  03:12

Can always blame the media can’t you

Jimmy  03:13

There’s a reason people are thinking badly of net strata is the media’s fault. So you can all rest assured. Yeah, so the state government is not buying any of that. They’ve decided that strata management needs generally, not just net strata. Strata management needs a tighter it needs to be in a tighter reign. So they’ve sort of outlined some proposals for new laws which will include that strata managers can’t charge for commission unless they’ve actually negotiated or helped to negotiate a better deal for their clients.

Sue Williams  03:51

Because this has always been a really contentious area, hasn’t it? Because I think a lot of strata agents who charge commission often would say, Well, the reason they charge commission was because they got a much, much lower rate  for their clients, so therefore their clients were actually saving overall,

Jimmy  04:07

Yeah,

Sue Williams  04:07

But then a lot of them didn’t disclose the figures, no. So how can their clients judge whether they’re getting a better deal?

Jimmy  04:14

Absolutely, and there is no palpable benefit that you can see for having your your insurance negotiated by a strata manager. The weird thing is, you call up the insurance company and say, “We want to directly get our strata insurance from you. Can you just cut off the amount that you would be paying the strata manager and commission?” And the insurance company say, No. So that’s a that’s a tricky situation. It just doesn’t feel right. You know, I think what they say, it doesn’t pass the pub test. So anyway, the government has said that they’re going to crack down on strata managers. They’re also going to crack down on conflict of interest,

Sue Williams  04:56

If it’s not disclosed, yes, and I think they’re going to increase penalties for. Both of those things, aren’t they?

Jimmy  05:01

Yeah, but penalties, penalties schmenalties. I mean, the two bodies that are going to advise them on these new regulations are the owners Corporation, network, great guys,

Sue Williams  05:13

Yep, yep,

Jimmy  05:14

And strata community, Australia, who, I think they’re still on the naughty step, as far as I’m concerned.

Sue Williams  05:21

Well, they used to be run by, was it the CEO of net strata?

Jimmy  05:24

Yeah, General Manager,

Sue Williams  05:25

General Manager. And he ended up, as he left the he has resigned.

Jimmy  05:30

He had to resign as president of SCA. We didn’t have to, but he did. He was, let’s just say he was encouraged to, and he resigned from the board of SCA, but my spies tell me that he thinks he’ll be back.

Sue Williams  05:46

Wow, yeah, so that’s the body who advising the government,

Jimmy  05:50

Yes, yes,

Sue Williams  05:52

Right.

Jimmy  05:52

So is strata Community Australia going to advise the government that they should bring in tougher penalties and for members, for their members, repeat offenders, losing the license. How would that work? Do you think that would be a deterrent?

Sue Williams  06:07

I think it would. But I think it’s unlikely the SCA would ever suggest that

Jimmy  06:10

Really? SCA strata Community Association, because they then spread to New Zealand, so they changed the name from strata Community Australia to strata Community Association, but now they have an umbrella parent body called strata Community Association Australasia.

Sue Williams  06:32

Oh, my God.

Jimmy  06:34

So they on their website. They might have taken it down now, because I had a go at them a couple of weeks ago, right at the top, right at the top of their website, it says, We are the peak body representing strata owners and tenants.

Sue Williams  06:48

Wow.

Jimmy  06:48

So I’m thinking owners Corporation network is the peak body that represents owners that’s in New South Wales and increasingly Victoria, the unit Owners Association of Queensland, represents strata owners in Queensland, and the tenants union represents tenants. So there they are. It’s so funny. They’re announcing, hey, we’re going to announce a new chair, an independent chair of our complaints division, they say, but just above that, they say, and we are the peak body representing tenants and owners. Just get real. Stop lying to people. That would be a big step forward,

Sue Williams  07:24

Because that’s a huge conflict of interest. How could you possibly represent owners and strata managers? Yeah, as I have whose whose interests are sometimes diametrically opposed,

Jimmy  07:36

As I have often said for those people, including a couple of journalists in Sydney, as I have often said to them, what happens if an owner wants to complain against strata manager, who is the SCA going to support? Let me think about that for half a millisecond. We know the answer, and if you’re not going to take the sides of people that you claim to support and promote and represent, then you are not representing them very well.

Sue Williams  08:06

Yep, that’s right, and it’s interesting, because there are now 86,000 and 86,500 strata schemes in New South Wales. That’s a huge number. And the lack of regulation of strata managers, the ones who are kind of looking after these, yeah, it’s quite incredible, because you’ve got 1.2 million people living in these strata schemes now. So and they need a bit of protection,

Jimmy  08:28

They do.They do. And I think it was last year or the year before, we were at the big party they threw to announce that they had got professional status. And I contacted the board, the professionals board here in New South Wales, and said, you know, you’ve got a code of conduct that your professional associations are supposed to abide by. And it seems to me that strata community, Australia has not only crossed the line on their own code of conduct, but they crossed the line on yours. What are you what you’re going to do about it? And I got a very polite email back saying we have no plans to do anything about it at the moment, but we are watching developments closely. So yeah, it’s not over, but there is an issue, and I’ve alluded to it in the website. The problem the government faces is they know that there are a lot not and by no means all strata managers are dodgy.

Sue Williams  09:26

No, there’s some very good ones, very good,

Jimmy  09:28

Very diligent.But there are some dodgy strata managers out there, and there’s a limit to what the government can do, because, as you said, there are 86,000 strata schemes. At the moment, something like 1000 strata schemes coming online every year, lots on, lots and lots of people going into strata for the first time. They need strata managers desperately to manage these people, to help them, to advise them. Give them good advice. Give them support. They really can’t afford to be doing what David Chandler is doing in the building industry, which is to get rid of 20% of developers who just aren’t doing the right thing.

Sue Williams  10:10

Absolutely.

Jimmy  10:11

So the government has got a problem, but they got to be seen to be doing something at the very least. How do you tell if a strata manager could have got you a better deal. You could say, oh, it could be cheaper, but the terms of the deal could be different. How do you guage this?

Sue Williams  10:27

It’s very difficult, and they need a lot of resources. As Karen styles from the OCN said, they need more resources to be able to check up on these people, yeah, but it’s a really critical thing, because people need to have confidence when they buy apartments. And you know, the future of housing in Australia is all about high density living,

Jimmy  10:46

Yeah.

Sue Williams  10:46

And we just need to shore that up and make sure that it’s a great option for people,

Jimmy  10:50

Yep. So the answer, obviously, is the media, and we’ve got to stop telling stories about all the bad things. Everybody will be fine. That will be the day when we come back, we’re going to talk about one of the big conflicts in development at the moment, which is, what would you rather have, low cost development for less well off people, or luxury development for well heeled people? That’s after this.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy  11:21

So you’ve been digging around in the now, what do you call them? Boarding House area?

Sue Williams  11:26

Yes, that’s right. There’s lots of boarding houses in Sydney. There’s an incredible number. Actually, I had no idea there were so many. But these tend to be kind of hidden away in little back streets of places. And they tend to be maybe five or six levels high. You kind of think that they would be private apartments, or maybe they’re hotels or something, but they’re actually boarding houses, and they are probably the most affordable accommodation that we have. And as we know, we’ve got an incredible housing crisis with a complete lack of affordable housing and social housing for people who are not very well off, and because prices have soared over recent years, particularly after covid and during covid, it means a lot of people just can’t afford accommodation, so boarding houses are kind of their last resort. And the problem is now many of the boarding houses have been going for about 100 years. Some of them started after World War One for the soldiers returning,

Jimmy  12:18

Right,

Sue Williams  12:19

And who didn’t have anywhere to live, so they’ve been going for a long time, and lots of boarding house residents have been in their same places for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years,

Jimmy  12:29

Right? So it’s not a temporary accommodation for a lot of people.

Sue Williams  12:32

Not at all. It can be used as temporary accommodation. But often these residents have been there for a long time, and they’re real, a real part of the community. And you look at the boarding houses, they’re pretty crummy. Most of them, you know, they’re just maybe a single room, like a studio or a kind of one bedroom apartment, like with a lounge room, combined kitchen and a bedroom. But they all have shared facilities. They have a shared kitchen, shared bathrooms. They might have a communal lounge as well, but they’re pretty ordinary, yeah, because the the average rent of a boarding house for for a week is about $200 could be as low as $150 so, you know, there’s not an awful lot you can expect for that much these days. Many of them just don’t have hot water. They’re nearly all privately owned by people

Jimmy  13:19

Like the whole building,

Sue Williams  13:21

The whole building right? And if the owners aren’t really good at getting on top of maintenance issues, they could be without hot water for long periods of time, or, you know, have broken front doors. That kind of

Jimmy  13:31

Sounds like you’re saying they don’t care.

Sue Williams  13:33

Some owners don’t, but some owners can be really good, and they’ll come in and they’ll fix stuff as soon as it goes wrong. But the difficulty is now a lot of these boarding houses are being really threatened, because property prices have been going up so quickly. These boarding houses occupy prime sites often, you know, in places like Paddington, Surry Hills, they’re all throughout the inner west. The inner west of Sydney has the highest density of boarding houses in Australia. They’re small sites, but they could be developed for into much bigger buildings. And developers are looking at them. They’re eyeing them and saying, yes, we want to buy this boarding house, and we want to knock it down, and we want to build luxury apartments there instead. And this is happening to lots and lots of affordable accommodation throughout Sydney at the moment. It’s happening in Bondi. It’s happening in Paddington. It’s happening in Darlinghurst. It’s happening in Elizabeth Bay, in Potts point. All these kind of areas throughout Sydney, developers are coming in and targeting these places, lots of them, they’ve managed to buy, and then they’re putting in DAs development applications to the local councils.

Jimmy  14:37

Yeah,

Sue Williams  14:37

And I went to see one boarding house the other day in Paddington, in Selwyn street, there’s a row of two boarding houses. They used to be they kind of look as if they were built with four houses originally, and the developers bought them, and they want to convert them into four luxury houses. And these boarding houses are home now to 32

Jimmy  14:57

Wow,

Sue Williams  14:57

People and one of them has been there for. 50 years.

Sue Williams  15:01

And they’re all kind of, you know, people, they have they might have disabilities, they might not have jobs, they might be on pensions, and they don’t really have many choices. But if those people are evicted, where are they to go? And when I talk to them, they said, Well, we can go and sleep at Central Station. We can go under the arches at the fish markets. You know, they really don’t have any alternatives, because there are no no other affordable accommodations. People aren’t building it. But is it really interesting in this Paddington case, is that the local community is really rallying behind the boarding houses. Now, Paddington is quite a wealthy blue chip area, and you would think that the neighbors of these boarding houses would say, I’d much rather have a fabulous luxury house next door with fabulous luxury, wealthy people. But they’re saying, no, we want these boarding houses to stay because these guys are members of our community, and we want a healthily, diverse community. And these guys have always been great, and we’ve got to know them over the years, they kind of say hello to us every morning. They give our dogs dog treats,

Jimmy  15:01

Wow.

Jimmy  16:02

Right!

Sue Williams  16:03

They keep an eye on the street, because they’re there all the time. They’re not away at work or anything. So one guy was saying, you know, he goes, he goes past him every morning, says, Good morning, and on his way back, he says, Good evening. And they tell him what’s been happening in the street. You know, they don’t need a neighborhood watch scheme, because these guys are around all the time.

Jimmy  16:20

Wow.

Sue Williams  16:20

And it’s very hard because, you know, developers obviously want to make a bit of money, but the the real demand at the moment in the market is from cashed -up, downsizers. They’re the ones with the money, and they’re all looking for big luxury apartments in some of these prime spots, right? They might have young families, or they might just want big apartments because they’ve they’ve come from big houses,

Jimmy  16:43

Yeah,

Sue Williams  16:43

And, you know, they might want their grandkids to stay sometimes, or their kids to stay if they they might not be able to get rid of their kids, often a problem now. So you can kind of see why developers want to do it, but it’s a real kind of battle between the rich and the poor really

Jimmy  16:59

Well it does prove what I’ve always said on this podcast and in the website, developers are not in the business of housing people. They’re in the business of making money.

Sue Williams  17:07

No, that’s right, it’s the private market, market forces, yeah, and you can’t really depend on market forces to provide housing for people who you know are really kind of in desperate straits, really the real battlers

Jimmy  17:20

Now, Paddington comes under Woollahra, I believe. Is that right? Woollahra Council,

Sue Williams  17:24

Part of it, part of it’s under city of Sydney,

Jimmy  17:27

And City of Sydney, the blessed Clover Moore is saying they’re not going to permit any new developments that reduce the number of people who can live in them, or something like that.

Sue Williams  17:39

That’s right. They’ve got those plans on exhibition. So they’re, they’re not actually in reality passed yet, but most people want to see them past. So if you have a big building that houses maybe 30 people, developers wouldn’t be allowed to put in a new building that houses less than maybe 20 people, right? You know, there’s a certain percentage that they can’t go below, and that’s a really good plan. And other councils are looking at this too and thinking they might want to do the same thing.

Jimmy  18:09

Now the government, there’s some rule that if a development is worth more than a certain amount of money, then the developer can apply to the government as a special agency or, you know, to

Sue Williams  18:22

They can apply to the joint planning panels if a development is over $30 million

Jimmy  18:29

Wow. I mean, most reasonable sized developments would be well over that, wouldn’t they?

Sue Williams  18:33

Well, what’s happening with these is that where the councils are saying no and they’re and they’re rejecting their development applications. Often the developers are going to the Land and Environment Court right, and that’s where the action is now

Jimmy  18:47

Right.

Sue Williams  18:47

Say, with these boarding houses in Selwyn street that’s gone to the land and Environment Court, there’s another building in Potts point that I covered, in Elizabeth Bay, that I wrote about, which has gone to the Land and Environment Court too, and they had a hearing in the street.

Jimmy  19:04

Oh, yes,

Sue Williams  19:05

Some of the residents actually could talk about the building.

Jimmy  19:07

You spoke about that I think the last time you were on

Sue Williams  19:10

Absolutely. So it’s, kind of, is it’s something that’s really gaining importance all the time, and kind of, there’s more and more of these buildings. I mean, every story I write about it, I get lots and lots and lots of people writing to me saying, We’ve got similar problems in our area,

Jimmy  19:24

Right?

Sue Williams  19:25

And a lot of people, I mean, I think it’s great that they’re saying they’re looking out for their boarding house neighbors, because a lot of these people, you know, they can’t really advocate for themselves. Sometimes they’re just not in a position to be able to do that, and they’re scared that they’re going to be evicted because they’re not covered by the Tenancy Act, so they can be evicted by an owner if the owner gets annoyed, if they speak out.

Jimmy  19:47

I know they’re not covered by the strata act, but tenancy and tenancy rules, oh, they’re different for boarding houses

Sue Williams  19:54

That’s right.

Jimmy  19:55

I say I get a sense of irony here, because I can sure I can remember occasions when local people have objected to low cost housing being built in their area, but this is the other way around. This is a 180 on that they’re saying they’re objecting to luxury of developments going up in their area.

Sue Williams  20:17

It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? Well, it’s not really funny at all. But yes, you’re quite right. I suppose the difference is this place, these boarding houses, have been there for a long time, and they’re kind of a really significant, integral part of the community, yeah, and people maybe just don’t want to live with other rich people all the time. They want a real slice of, you know, a mixed demography around them.

Jimmy  20:40

Tell you what the people who live in boarding houses tend not to do. They tend not to wake you up in the morning by riding off in their Harley Davidsons or their souped up Porsches roaring up the street.

Sue Williams  20:52

That’s true, and they often don’t have cars, so they often so they’re not taking parking spaces.

Jimmy  20:57

That’s there’s the key. Now we’ve got it. They want to the local residents want to hang on to all the parking?

Sue Williams  21:04

Oh, no. I think with these luxury buildings, all the developers want to excavate underneath for parking.

Jimmy  21:10

Ah, right. Okay. Now, when we come back, we’re briefly going to talk about these, these panels that have also come under fire this week. That’s after this.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy  21:25

Strangled by red tape, was the headline on The Daily Telegraph the other day in which they did a story about bureaucrats and boffins getting in the way of essential housing. Who are these bureaucrats and boffins Sue

Sue Williams  21:40

Well, that’s a Joint Regional Planning panel that we spoke about before. And if a development is worth more than $30 million it can go to them to be decided. Yeah, and the developer is Sam Arnaout from IRIS capital, and I think we all know him. We know him in this area because he’s the guy who’s redeveloping the Bourbon and Beefsteak

Jimmy  22:00

Now a big building site

Sue Williams  22:04

And he started off the Omnia building, which has been, you know, widely praised as a real landmark, yeah, Kings Cross as well.

Jimmy  22:13

Pepperpot. It looks like when you come down Darlinghurst road. Look at it.

Sue Williams  22:17

And he’s a big developer. He’s done a lot of development in Newcastle as well, right? And the story was actually about Newcastle. He’s got this huge development there in the East End, and it’s a four stage development, and he’s done the first two stages, and suddenly the last two stages have been rejected by the planning panel.

Jimmy  22:35

On what grounds?

Sue Williams  22:36

Well, we don’t really know, but I would imagine they would be saying over development perhaps, right? And I was interested to find out who sits on these planning panels, because, you know, he was complaining that they’re unelected people, and how comes they can they have the power? And yes, they’re unelected, but they’re appointed by some of them are appointed by the Minister, right? And some of them are appointed by councils, right? So actually, they’re appointed by elected representatives. So it’s, yeah, you know,

Jimmy  23:04

But elected representatives are not necessarily a guarantee that you’re going to get a fair, decent and honest outcome in these things.

Sue Williams  23:11

No,

Jimmy  23:12

The history of New South Wales is littered with brown paper bags that used to be full of used banknotes.

Sue Williams  23:18

Yeah, I was trying to find out who sits on these planning panels, but it’s actually really quite hard. You go, go, you know, really deep into clicking on links and stuff, but you never actually get to anybody’s names. But this is pool of about 60 people who who kind of move around a lot. They rotated a lot, so you never get the same people all the time. And you can apply to be on these planning panels, and you’re meant to have some kind of expertise. So maybe you’re a town planner, maybe you’re an architecture you’ve got some kind of knowledge of planning law and of building and of design.

Jimmy  23:30

So we could be on it!

Sue Williams  23:44

Which just shows how ridiculous the system is. So, yeah, so these, I think the heat is rising about this, the premier, Chris Minns, has said that he’s going to kind of look at the system again and review some of the decisions they make. So he’s kind of buttoning down trying to kind of avoid the fire, I suppose. But yeah, I mean, I guess we need more housing. Yeah, nobody wants it in their area. This is the big problem.

Jimmy  24:23

Yeah, my instinct is to be in favor of anything that the Daily Telegraph is against, but, but, you know, and as you said the other day, this bureaucrats and boffins, which was their their phrase, is part of that whole anti education thing that seems to be filtering over from the USA, thanks to Mr Murdoch. Is it? Is it a serious problem? Are these people making bad decisions? Or,

Sue Williams  24:51

I don’t know, but you can appeal against them, and I think he is going to appeal against them. So then actually, we’ll, we’ll learn a lot more about their decision and their refusal and whether it was on good grounds or not, whether the appeal will be upheld or whether it be dismissed.

Jimmy  25:05

ButI can, I can see why these people are effectively anonymous, because they’re going to get a lot of knocks on the door and phone calls from night, not from Sam, but from other developers.

Sue Williams  25:19

That’s right, it’s a tricky thing, isn’t it? Really can’t please everyone, and it’s hard when we have we’re in the middle of such a housing crisis, and people feel very strongly one way or the other, and it’s just, how did we get into this mess? That’s that’s the real issue, and the government should never have allowed this to happen. They should have been investing in social, affordable housing. They should be investing in these housing areas.

Jimmy  25:42

I blame Margaret Thatcher, right? Okay, when she started selling off council housing in the UK, she consolidated the idea that housing commission was a bad thing and government should not be housing people. People should be housing themselves. And I don’t know, maybe I mean, she is revered in right wing circles around the world, and including in Australia, there are people who think she’s a bee’s knees. I’m sure that Tony Abbott would have made her a dame, had he she was already he would have made her a princess or something, had she survived long enough to see his premiership of Australia,

Sue Williams  26:21

Absolutely. But as you know, I’m from a housing commission town, and it’s a whole town that was built by a government, and all the housing we just rented it from the housing commission, yeah, and Thatcher actually gave everybody the chance to buy houses there, and it turned overnight from a Labour town, because it was very poor town with traditional Labour voters. Overnight, it turned it into a Tory town, because people, for the first time, were able to own property, and it actually meant that there was just very little property left to rent, really, at the end of it. And it’s interesting, in the recent general election in Britain, Basildon has usually been my town, there’s usually been a bellwether town, but this time it wasn’t, and it is resoundingly Tory and with Nigel farage’s party coming very close. So yes, and nearby, there’s a town called Romford, and that’s become a conservative place as well. And it’s conservative. MP, he managed to retain the seat, and he lives in a house called Margaret Thatcher house.

Jimmy  27:27

Oh, there you go, proof, if you ever needed it. Okay, we have gone way over time today, a lot to catch up on. We’ll be interested to see what happens with the strata management, new laws, what happens with the boarding houses and what happens with the boffins and bureaucrats? But I’ve just realized that that story was written by Matthew Benz in The Daily Telegraph, and he’s a good bloke.

Sue Williams  27:53

Yes, he is.

Jimmy  27:54

He is, and he’s one of the good guys in the media. So maybe it’s not a piece of nonsense after all. And on that note, having insulted our full quota of people for one week, it’s time to say goodbye. Thank you very much for listening, and we will talk to you again. You might hear me on ABC Radio this week.

Sue Williams  28:14

Oh, okay, great. And listen out Jimmy,

Jimmy  28:17

And you will see Sue’s story about the boarding houses, hopefully in the Sydney Morning Herald

Sue Williams  28:23

This weekend,

Jimmy  28:24

This weekend. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll talk to you soon.

Sue Williams  28:29

Bye,

Jimmy  28:30

Bye

Jimmy  28:32

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, 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.