The embers of the now-global Tim Gurner avocado shaming scandal – yes, those words are all real – are starting to burn out, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a little bit of fun to be had.
A few days before the colossal, worldwide roasting of the erstwhile ‘pull your bloody socks up, millennials’ property developer began, he had a sit-down interview with the Australian Financial Review as part of their Lunch with the 2017 Rich List series.
He didn’t prelude the arguments he made in his his now-infamous 60 Minutes roasting of savings-averse millennials – perhaps because the audience of the AFR probably care substantially less about that sort of thing. Instead, he mostly complained about how hard it is to build apartments in Australia:
It’s an incredibly challenging time in the market, no question. We’ve got foreign buyer restrictions, lending restrictions and we’ve got a planning minister here [in Victoria] who is being difficult. And we’ve had 18 months of the press being negative about property.
Perhaps some of the negativity about property comes from the fact nobody can bloody afford property. Just a thought.
Well, i did feature a pretty fun little tidbit – Gurner says that he has learned “valuable lessons” from his time developing a luxury apartment tower in Brisbane‘s Fortitude Valley. The costs of his development blew out by a very casual $33 million – with a budgeted spend of $57 million ending up at $90 million.
He did get rescued in the end, thanks to – in his own words – “finding better ways, finding efficiencies and working with a supportive council.” He also sorted out a $28 million deal with hotel company Mantra to manage 1000 apartments in the project, which couldn’t hurt.
Turns out that even those who dish out advice to destitute millennials can get thoroughly screwed around by the market, and need the assistance of a “supportive council” to help ’em out. Funny about that.
All I’m saying is this: if you managed to score back the $33M you lost thanks to a cost blowout… surely you can shout every millennial in Australia just one coffee. And an avo on toast, if you were feeling generous.
Source: Australian Financial Review.
Photo: 60 Minutes.
