00:00This issue is too big for governments to solve alone. It is actually a whole of a community
00:06problem and that includes business. So with organisations that support us around the country
00:11now, because we're in every state and territory except Northern Territory, we're calling business
00:16to actually lend a hand to help this country with its housing crisis because it's just
00:20too big for government alone.
00:23So what exactly do you want these companies to do?
00:26Well, we have companies like Metricon, Henley, Mervac, Hanson Young, all contributing their
00:31skills and services to refurbish some of the existing buildings that are sitting vacant.
00:36Now as part of it, I'm a former developer, I am a capitalist, but it doesn't mean we
00:40don't care about vulnerable people. So what we're doing is we're galvanising the private
00:45sector to actually refurbish some of these buildings and give it to a not-for-profit
00:49to help vulnerable people. And we have a philosophy that every business does a little bit. Collectively
00:55we can do a lot and we can help this country and create housing as a pressure relief valve
01:01because it already exists while we build the hundreds of thousands of homes that our country
01:06actually needs.
01:07Earlier this month there was a hotel chain that donated its old furniture when it was
01:13replacing the furniture. They donated their furniture to a new women's shelter in Tasmania.
01:19How do we make these kind of planets align more often to get more bang for our buck with
01:24these kinds of donations?
01:26It's collaboration. And Quest Department Hotels and their parent company, the Ascot
01:30Group, donated half a million dollars of furniture to a refurbishment of an existing building
01:36in Hobart that we are helping Vinny's to actually refurbish. And we are doing it with the private
01:42sector, the compassionate capitalism that exists down there. Dulux, for argument's sake,
01:47has donated all the pain and in fact they're donating all the pain to every project nationally.
01:52It's a matter of coordinating it through a common compassionate capitalist lens because
01:57ultimately this is an economic problem as well as a social problem.
02:01You say you're a capitalist. Well what's in it for the business then?
02:05Well from the business point of view we've got a long term interest in our country. We
02:08take a long term view. It is our grandchildren that are going to be really suffering more
02:13so than what they are doing today. But the concern I have is that our social cohesion
02:19is slowly evaporating because we're allowing homelessness to be normalised. And homelessness
02:25is the canary in the coal mine to a much broader issue in our housing continuum. And having
02:30lived and breathed property all my life, this is not going to be solved overnight. It's
02:35actually happened over the last 30 to 40 years and it's going to take at least that time
02:40to actually resolve it if we start seriously. And we must have a bipartisan approach. This
02:46is much more than politics because without shelter a human being has unintended consequences
02:52that span into physical and mental health, family violence, justice, policing, long term
02:57welfare dependency. But with a roof over someone's head they can become a productive citizen
03:03and that's what we're all about.
03:04So what does the future of the Australian economy look like if we don't effectively
03:09tackle homelessness?
03:11I think it's going to be a polarising society that we're creating and business will actually
03:16have to buy buildings, as they are doing now, to house their employees. Otherwise they're
03:21not going to get the right employees close to where they service them. In Victoria the
03:25Sorrento Hotel had to buy an old aged care facility to house its workers. The Dallas
03:31Food Cafe, again in Victoria, had to buy an old aged care facility to house its workers.
03:36It is a business problem around the country. Some businesses are not efficient, they're
03:41running at 60% efficiency in Queensland, for argument's sake, because they can't find
03:46housing for its workers. We have to declare war on homelessness and housing because during
03:53war, times of war, enemies unite in the national interest. This is something that must go beyond
04:00politics and what we are trying to do is create respectful unrest by educating the
04:06public about what they don't know, because without respectful unrest there is never any
04:11political self-interest.
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